























RAINBOW HILL 




























THEY SPENT THE MORNING DOWN AT THE BROOK. 


“Rainbow Hill” 


Page 183 












RAINBOW 

HILL 


By 


Josephine Lawrence 

Author of 

ROSEMARY 


Illustrated by 
Thelma Gooch 


NEW YORK 

CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY 
















Copyright, 1924, by 
Cupples & Leon Company 


Rainbow Hill 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I Plans . 1 

II Looking Forward.12 

III Rainbow Hill. 22 

IV First Impressions.33 

V Days of Delight.. . 43 

VI Winnie Is Nervous. 53 

VII An Adventure for Sarah * ... 63 

VIII Storm Signals.74 

IX One Wish Comes True.84 

X An Eventful Day.94 

XI All Serene Again. 105 

XII Napoleon Bonaparte. 118 

XIII The Gay Family.128 

XIV The Gay Finances. 138 

XV The Poor Farm.148 

XVI Sarah’s Surprise. 159 

XVII Willing and Obliging. 172 

XVIII A New Friend. 183 



















/ 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER 

XIX 

Jack—Hired Man . . . 


• 

• 

. 198 

XX 

A Little Girl Lost . • 

m 


• 

. 208 

XXI 

Down Linden Road . . 

• 



. 223 

XXII 

Sarah Has an Idea . . 

• 

• 

• 

. 233 

XXIII 

Bony Joins the Circus . 

• 

• 

• 

. 247 

XXIV 

Truly a Sacrifice . . 

• 

• 

• 

. 262 

XXV 

Up to Mischief . . . 

• 

• 

• 

. 275 

XXVI 

Something to Remember 

• 

• 

• 

. 289 

XXVII 

Summer’s End .... 




. 298 










LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

They spent the morning down at the brook 

(see page 183) . Frontispiece 

“This the first time you’ve been on a farm?” he 

asked .. 37 

“It’s so nice to have a girl of my own age to 

talk to”. 125 

Sarah put him through his paces and change of 
costumes with pride. 


251 









RAINBOW HILL 


CHAPTER I 

PLANS 

D OCTOR HUGH leaned back in his 
swivel chair and looked anxiously at 
his mother. 

“I don’t believe you realize how incessant the 
noise will be,” he urged. “Every morning ham¬ 
mering and sawing and the inevitable shouting 
and argument that seem to attend all building 
operations, especially when the job is one of 
alteration, like this.” 

“I shall not mind the noise, dear,” said Mrs. 
Willis tranquilly. “Let me see the plans 
again.” 

She held out her hand for the blue prints and 
four interested heads immediately bent above 
them, Rosemary being tall enough to look over 
her mother’s shoulder and Sarah and Shirley 
pressing close to her side. 

“I don’t see how anyone can tell a thing from 
1 


2 


RAINBOW HILL 


that,” Rosemary complained. “There’s nothing 
but white lines.” 

The doctor smiled, but his glance was on the 
frail, almost transparent hands which held the 
roll of paper flat on the desk. 

“I suppose you thought that carpenters 
worked from photographs of completed in¬ 
teriors, or illustrations in interior-decoration 
catalogues,” he suggested good-naturedly. 
“You see before you, Rosemary, a most practi¬ 
cal conception of two offices and a reception 
room. Mr. Greggs will rip out one side of the 
house and add them on as a wing and when the 
joining is painted over you’ll think those rooms 
were built when the original house was.” 

“Well—all right,” conceded Rosemary, “I 
suppose Mr. Greggs knows. Anyway, it will be 
fun to have something going on. Vacation cer¬ 
tainly isn’t very exciting.” 

“I want to see them rip the house,” announced 
Sarah with intense satisfaction. 

“I think I owe it to Mr. Greggs almost as 
much as to Mother, to have you at a safe di¬ 
stance before the ripping begins,” said Doctor 
Hugh a little grimly. “Somehow I have the 
feeling, Sarah, that the best-laid plans of archi¬ 
tects may go awry when you’re about.” 





PLANS 


3 


“Huh!” retorted Sarah, abandoning blue 
prints for her favorite goatskin rug on which she 
flopped in an attitude more comfortable than 
graceful. 

Shirley, too, wearying of the unfamiliar, 
turned to the delights of the iron wastebasket 
into which she tried to wedge her plump self 
with indifferent success and a great crackling of 
paper. 

Doctor Hugh began to sharpen a pencil with 
meticulous care, his dark eyes behind their 
glasses apparently intent on the task in hand. 
But the more discerning of his patients, and 
every nurse who had served on his cases, could 
have told you that Doctor Willis always saw 
most when he appeared to be quite absorbed. 

Even an outsider would have been interested 
in the group gathered in the young doctor’s office 
that summer afternoon. The little mother (she 
was no taller than her oldest daughter and came 
only to her tall son’s shoulder) sat at one side 
of the flat-topped desk, leaning her head on one 
hand as she studied the plans for the addition to 
the house. She was very lovely and very appeal¬ 
ing, from her wavy dark hair faintly streaked 
with gray to her little buckled slippers, and there 
was nothing of the invalid about her. It would 




4 


RAINBOW HILL 


have been difficult to say, off-hand, just why she 
should inspire the conviction, immediate and 
swift, that those who loved her must be con¬ 
stantly on guard to protect her against physical 
exhaustion and weakness. Difficult, that is, only 
until one saw her patient, shining eyes and then 
one knew, what had never been hidden from 
Doctor Hugh, that in her body dwelt an un¬ 
quenchable spirit that would always outrun her 
strength. 

In Rosemary, leaning above her mother and 
studying the blue prints so intently that a little 
frown gathered between her arched brows, the 
spirit and strength were united. The effect of 
Rosemary on the most casual beholder, was al¬ 
ways one of radiance. The mass of her waving 
hair was hronze, said her friends; it was red, it 
was gold, it was all of these. Her eyes were 
like her mother’s, a violet blue, but dancing, 
drenched in tears or black with storm—seldom 
patient eyes. She lived intensely, did Rose¬ 
mary, and sometimes she hurt herself and some¬ 
times she hurt others. She could be obstinate— 
wanting her own way with the insistence of a 
driving force; that was the Willis will working 
in her, Winnie said. All the Willis children had 
that trait, Winnie said also. Rosemary could 




PLANS 


5 


be sorry and make frank confession. That, 
Sarah always thought, was the hardest thing in 
the world to do. 

The dark and stolid Sarah lying on her stom¬ 
ach on the white goatskin rug, was “the queer 
one” of the family. Sarah’s nature was as un¬ 
compromising as her own square-toed sandals 
and about as blunt. Demonstrations of affec¬ 
tion bored her. She tended strictly to her in¬ 
terests and felt small concern in the affairs of 
her sisters. You could reach Sarah—after you 
had learned the way—and the depths in her were 
worth reaching. But her one passionate devo¬ 
tion was for animals—she would do anything 
for her pets, dare anything for them. Sometimes 
Doctor Hugh wondered if she would not sacri¬ 
fice anyone to their needs. 

If one desired a contrast to Sarah, there was 
Shirley. Shirley who sat in the wastebasket 
and beamed upon an approving world. Six 
year old Shirley was a born sunbeam and her 
brief fits of temper only seemed to intensify 
the normal sunshine of her disposition. She 
smiled and she coaxed answering smiles from 
the severest mortal; she dimpled and laughter 
bubbled up to meet her chuckling mirth. It was 
impossible to remain cross or ill-tempered when 




6 


RAINBOW HILL 


Shirley danced into a room and it is to be feared 
that her gifts of cajolery bought her off from 
often needed reproofs. It was never easy to 
scold Shirley. 

Doctor Hugh Willis, sharpening his pencil so 
painstakingly, knew all this and more. To his 
natural endowment of keen-eyed penetration 
had been recently added the illuminating ex¬ 
perience of a year as sole head of the household 
—a year in which the little mother had been ab¬ 
sent in a sanitarium recovering her shattered 
health and he had been responsible for the wel¬ 
fare of his sisters. 

Not the least interesting figure of that group 
—Doctor Hugh. Dark-haired, dark-eyed and 
tall, his keen, intelligent face could be as expres¬ 
sive as Rosemary’s. His chin was firm and his 
mouth could be grim and smiling, by turns. His 
speaking voice was rather remarkable in the 
range of its modulations and his manner was 
incisive as one used to commanding obedience. 
His patients said “Doctor” had a way with him. 

“Shall I cut the cake, or put it on whole?” in¬ 
quired someone blandly on the other side of the 
closed door. 

“There’s Winnie,” said Mrs. Willis, lifting 
her head and smiling. “Open the door, Shir¬ 
ley.” 




PLANS 


7 


Five pairs of eyes turned affectionately to the 
tall, thin woman who stepped into the room as 
Shirley obeyed. This was Winnie without whom 
the Willis household would have been lost in¬ 
deed since for twenty-eight years she had solved 
every domestic difficulty for them, shrewdly and 
capably. Loyalty and service were beautiful, 
concrete things in her faithful loving eyes. Dear 
Winnie! 

“About the cake,” she said now, smoothing 
her immaculate apron and glancing sharply at 
the circle of rather serious faces. 

“Bother the cake,” answered Doctor Hugh, 
secure in the knowledge that whatever he said 
would receive Winnie’s unqualified approval. 
“Have you seen the plans for the new office, 
Winnie?” 

“That I have not,” she replied eagerly and 
Rosemary yielded her place while Winnie stared 
over Mrs. Willis’ shoulder at the mysterious 
white lines and dots. 

“You must be expecting a lot of sick folks, 
Hughie,” she commented after a moment’s 
study. 

“I’ll give up the other office,” the doctor ex¬ 
plained, “and have all my office hours here.” 

“When can Mr. Greggs start work, Hugh?” 




8 


RAINBOW HILL 


asked his mother, rescuing the elastic bands from 
Shirley and moving the ink well back from the 
small, exploring fingers. 

“Next week, he hopes,” Doctor Hugh an¬ 
swered. “There won’t be any digging to be 
done, because we are not going to extend the 
cellar; hut there will be mason work for the 
foundation and they want to open out the side 
of the hall as soon as they start.” 

“It will be messy,” said Winnie, with unmis¬ 
takable disapproval of anything “messy.” 

“It will be messy,” agreed the doctor. “Worse 
than that, it will be noisy. I want Mother and 
you to take the girls and go away till it is over. 
I don’t think anyone should he asked to endure 
the sound of constant hammering in the hot 
weather; I’ll be out of the house so much that I 
don’t count and of course I’ll keep the other 
office till things are in shape here.” 

He spoke evenly, but his eyes met Winnie’s 
across Mrs. Willis’ shapely drooping head. 

“I think we ought to get out of Mr. Greggs’ 
way,” declared Winnie briskly. “Carpenters 
have small patience with women and their house¬ 
keeping habits. They think we’re interfering 
when we only want to keep ’em from driving 
nails in the mahogany tables. And if they’re go- 





PLANS 


9 


ing to ruin the hall rug with their bricks and 
mortar I, for one, don’t want to be here to see 
it.” 

“Oh, Winnie, you fraud!” Mrs. Willis spoke 
merrily. “You are not worrying about the hall 
rug—I know you too well. You’re siding w T ith 
Hugh and you are both conspiring to wreck the 
household budget a second time. I had all the 
luxury one woman is entitled to last year in the 
sanitarium—from now on I intend to consider 
expenses and a summer away from home isn’t to 
be thought of.” 

“Your health is worth more than dollars and 
cents,” said Winnie sagely. 

“I’m not going to take music lessons this 
vacation,” offered Rosemary. “That ought to 
help, Mother.” 

“If I can arrange it so you can leave the house 
while the alterations are being put through and 
yet keep the living expenses down to your stipu¬ 
lated level—will you go, Mother?” said Doctor 
Hugh artfully. 

“Can you come, too?” countered his mother. 

“Well—part of the time at least,” he tem¬ 
porized. 

A sudden picture of her orderly quiet home in 
the hands of the loud-talking, aggressively 




10 


RAINBOW HILL 


cheerful town carpenter and his helpers, the 
gash in the hall letting in dirt and flies, with the 
attendant bustle and confusion that go with 
artisan work, flashed across Mrs. Willis vision. 
Sarah and Shirley must he constantly admon¬ 
ished to keep out of mischief and danger, Winme 
placated when her domain should be encroached 
upon. And the noise of hammers and saws 
and files! 

“I have only two objections to going away, 
Hugh,” said Mrs. Willis quietly. “One is leav¬ 
ing you and the other is the expense.” 

“Then it is as good as settled,” declared Doc¬ 
tor Hugh, rolling up the blue prints and snap¬ 
ping an elastic around them as though he 
snapped his ideas into place with the same deft 
movement. 

Rosemary’s eyes began to shine. 

“Oh, Hugh, tell us!” she begged. “I know 
you have some perfectly lovely plan tell us 
what it is.” 

But the doctor’s smile was enigmatic and the 
two words he vouchsafed a conundrum to them 
all. 

“Rainbow Hill,” was the answer he made to 
every question. 

Winnie, always an ally of the doctor’s, ap- 




PLANS 


11 


pealed to, could give no help. “If you studied 
geography more and cats less, Sarah,” she in¬ 
formed that small girl who insisted on repeated 
questioning, “you might be able to tell me. 
I’ve told you before that I know nothing at all 
about this Rainbow Hill.” 

And Rosemary, waylaying her brother with 
carefully planned nonchalance fared no more 
successfully. 

“You can’t wheedle any news out of me, my 
dear,” announced Doctor Hugh, his eyes twin¬ 
kling. “All in good time—and after Mother, 
you’ll be the first to be told. Patience is a vir¬ 
tue, Rosemary.” 

And then he ducked to escape the porch 
cushion she sent whirling toward him. 




CHAPTER II 


LOOKING FORWARD 

i<-g- DON’T believe you’ve heard a word I’ve 
1 been saying, Jack Welles!’ ’ 

A The boy on his knees before the tangled 
fishing tackle spread out on the lowest porch 
step, looked up alertly. 

“Sure I heard,” he protested. “Something or 
other is ‘perfectly adorable.’ ” 

Rosemary laughed. She had been sitting in 
the porch swing and now she came and camped 
on the middle step, chin in hand, regardless of 
the hot sunshine that turned her bronze hair to 
red gold. 

“I suppose I did say that,” she admitted. 
“But it really is, Jack. I don’t believe Mother 
would call it an exaggeration.” 

Jack Welles frowned at a tangle of line. 

“I heard you,” he said again, “but I didn’t get 
where this place is—I saw you and your mother 
going off with Hugh in the car this morning,” he 
added. 


12 


LOOKING FORWARD 


13 


‘Til untangle that for you,” offered Rose¬ 
mary, holding out her hand for the line. “We 
went to see Rainbow Hill and now Mother is 
crazy to go there for the summer. Hugh is as 
pleased as pleased can be, for he wants her to 
go somewhere before Mr. Greggs starts the work 
here.” 

“Where’s Rainbow Hill?” asked Jack, watch¬ 
ing the slim fingers as they worked at the waxed 
silk thread so woefully knotted. 

“That’s the best part of the whole plan,” 
Rosemary assured him, taking his knowledge of 
a plan for granted. “It’s only about eight or 
nine miles from here and twelve from Benning¬ 
ton. Hugh can easily come out in the car. You 
must have seen the house, Jack—it is right on 
the tip-top of that hill to the right, the little 
white clapboarded house you see as soon as you 
pass the cross-roads.” 

“I’ve seen it,” said Jack. 

“Well you may have seen it, but you can’t 
tell how lovely it is until you go through it,” de¬ 
clared Rosemary, winding a free length of line 
about her slender wrist for safe-keeping. 
“There’s no front porch—you step into the liv¬ 
ing-room right from the lawn. But there is a 
side porch with awnings and screens that Mother 
will just love.” 




14 


RAINBOW HILL 


“Where are the folks who live there?” de¬ 
manded the practical Jack. 

“They’re going to California, to visit their 
married daughter,” Rosemary explained. 
“They’re patients of Hugh’s—Mr. and Mrs. 
Hammond. And they wanted to rent the house 
because they didn’t like the idea of closing it for 
almost three months with all their nice furniture 
and a piano and everything in it. So—wasn’t 
it lucky—they happened to ask Hugh if he knew 
of anyone who would rent the place furnished 
and he saw right away it would be just the thing 
for us.” 

“Whereupon they insisted that he take it as a 
gift, with a maid and two butlers thrown in,” re¬ 
cited Jack, who knew in what affection Doctor 
Hugh’s patients held him. 

“Not exactly,” dimpled Rosemary, “but they 
did say that if Mother would live there during 
the summer they would consider it a favor and 
wouldn’t dream of charging rent. Mrs. Ham¬ 
mond said she knew she wouldn’t have to worry 
about her things if Doctor Hugh’s mother would 
be there to look after them. But, of course, 
Hugh wouldn’t listen to that—he said business 
was business and as soon as he and Mr. Ham¬ 
mond had the rent fixed, Hugh took Mother 



LOOKING FORWARD 


15 


and me to see Rainbow Hill. And it’s too lovely 
for words/’ 

“Any butlers?” suggested Jack. 

“Not a butler,” answered Rosemary firmly. 
“Winnie beats all the butlers I ever saw—or 
read about,” she emended, remembering that her 
actual experience with butlers was limited. 

“Winnie won’t take kindly to pumping water 
from the well every morning,” said Jack, sort¬ 
ing fish hooks with a practised hand. 

“There’s no water to pump,” was the prompt 
and cheerful response. “It’s an old-fashioned 
house, but the plumbing is new—Hugh found 
that out before he even mentioned Rainbow Hill 
to Mother. It will be such fun to show the place 
to Sarah and Shirley—I can hardly wait.” 

Jack looked up at the vivid, glowing face 
above him. 

“I can imagine Sarah let loose on a farm,” he 
said drily. “They’d better tie up the pigs and 
nail down the cows—I wouldn’t trust that girl 
within ten feet of a live animal.” 

“You think you’re smart, Jack Welles!” 
broke in the wrathful voice of Sarah as that 
young person hurled herself around the side of 
the house and confronted them indignantly. 
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” 




16 


RAINBOW HILL 


“ ’Scuse me, Sarah, I didn’t know you were 
within hearing distance,” apologized Jack with 
proper contriteness. “Don’t be mad at me, 
Sally, for here you are going away—when are 
you going?” 

“Monday,” said Sarah sullenly. 

“You’re going away Monday,” went on Jack, 
“and you may not see me till September; can’t 
we part friends, Sarah?” 

Sarah regarded him suspiciously, but he sur¬ 
veyed her over his fish hooks and was apparently 
quite serious. 

“I’ll be glad to leave some people in this 
neighborhood,” stated Sarah with peculiar dis¬ 
tinctness. “I’m going to do just as I please at 
Rainbow Hill.” 

“Then I take it that Hugh won’t be there?” 
said Jack, but Rosemary hastened to act as 
peacemaker. 

“Don’t fuss,” she advised them wisely. “ J ack, 
I may learn how to fish this summer myself— 
Mr. Hammond told Hugh that Mr. Hildreth is 
a great fisherman.” 

Jack asked who Mr. Hildreth was and Sarah 
answered that he was the tenant farmer. 

“And his wife is the tenant farmeress,” said 
Sarah importantly. “They live in another 
house and plant things—Hugh told me.” 




LOOKING FORWARD 


17 


“Yes’m, I don’t doubt it,” agreed Jack, when 
he had assimilated this remarkable information, 
“but how come a farmer and a farmeress have 
time to give lessons in fishing?” 

Rosemary began on the last knot in the line. 

“Don’t be silly, Jack,” she begged. “There’ll 
be two boys there—Mrs. Hildreth says her hus¬ 
band gets two students from the State Agricul¬ 
tural College to help him every summer. They’ll 
want to go fishing and Sarah and I can go 
along.” 

“When you farm, you farm,” said Jack sen- 
tentiously. “You don’t hoe the potatoes one day 
and then go fishing for a week. But I may be 
wrong at that and if you find Mr. Hildreth 
needs an extra hired man, Rosemary, one to go 
fishing, I mean, ask him to send for me. I’ll 
come right up and fish and look after the garden 
in my odd moments.” 

“Hugh’s coming to spend two weeks in 
August,” announced Sarah. “And he’ll come 
out as many week-ends as he can; will you really 
come, Jack?” 

“I always did yearn to be a hired man,” Jack 
answered earnestly, “and they tell us there is no 
time like the present to put one’s ambition in 
training. I’m awfully afraid I’ll have to earn 




18 


RAINBOW HILL 


my living after I leave school and a nice trade, 
like that of hired man, might be useful in my 
later life. I’ll think it over and let you know, 
Sarah; but don’t let Mr. Hildreth build on my 
coming—I can’t face his grief and disappoint¬ 
ment in case I fail to turn up. , 

“You think you’re smart!” was Sarah’s re¬ 
tort and Rosemary said to herself that it was im¬ 
possible to tell when Jack was in earnest. 

Winnie came out and told them that lunch 
was ready just then, and J ack took his fishing 
tackle and retreated to his own home which was 
next door, first thanking Rosemary fervently for 
the unknotted line she handed him. 

There were times during the days of prepara¬ 
tion for the eventful Monday when Mrs. Willis 
wondered whether they were really wise to go 
to so much trouble, times when she thought 
wearily that her own home, noisy as it might be, 
would he far preferable to the effort required to 
adapt her family to a new environment. 

Rosemary put the feeling into words one noon 
when the doctor came home to lunch and found 
her sitting on the floor beside a trunk with a lap¬ 
ful of rusty keys. 

“Nothing fits,” complained Rosemary. “All 
the keys to everything are lost. And I don’t see 





LOOKING FORWARD 


19 


what good a restful summer will do Mother if 
she has nervous prostration before she gets off.” 

Doctor Hugh settled several difficulties in as 
many minutes—he had a gift for that—by dis¬ 
patching Sarah to the locksmith with soft-soap 
impressions of the keyless locks and orders to 
get keys to fit them and insisting that his mother 
must stay quietly in her room the remainder of 
the day and be served with luncheon and supper 
there. 

“You girls try to talk all at once,” he told his 
three sisters when they sat down at last to Win¬ 
nie’s rice waffles, “and that is enough to tire any¬ 
one.” 

“Can’t I take the cat, Hugh?” urged Sarah 
anxiously. “You can take it in the car for me 
and I know fresh country air will be good for 
poor Esther.” 

“Esther wouldn’t appreciate Rainbow Hill,” 
said Doctor Hugh with conviction. “Cats don’t 
like to change their homes, Sarah. Besides, 
you’ll have all the animals you want once you 
are on the farm. And that reminds me I want 
to say one thing to you.” 

“I suppose,” remarked Sarah plaintively, 
“you’re going to scold.” 

“Not exactly,” said her brother, smiling in 




20 


RAINBOW HILL 


spite of himself. “But while I want you to 
have a happy summer, Sarah, and ‘collect’ 
snakes and bugs and insects to your heart s con¬ 
tent, I want you to understand clearly that the 
menagerie is to be kept outside of the house. 
Mother and Winnie mustn’t be expected to get 
used to finding snakes in boxes and spiders in 
bottles, and the place to study a colony of ants 
is outside, not in the front hall. If I find you 
can’t remember this one rule, you’ll have to come 
back to Eastshore and stay with me during the 
week.” 

Sarah, with an unhappy recollection of the 
furore she had created the week before when she 
had bodily transplanted a thriving colony of 
ants to the hall rug, promised to remember. 

“Jack Welles said he might come up for a 
couple of weeks and be a hired man,” announced 
Rosemary, smiling. 

“I hope he does,” approved the doctor 
promptly. “He’ll find it an endurance test and 
a particularly valuable one. Yes, Winnie?” 

“I wish you’d step out and look at the canna 
bed,” said Winnie grimly. “Every single plant 
pulled out and left dying in the sun.” 

“Why, I did that,” declared Shirley in her 
clear little voice that always reminded Winnie 





LOOKING FORWARD 


21 


of a robin’s chirp. “I thought Mother would 
want to take the cannas to Rainbow Hill with 
us—we can plant them around the porch there.” 

Doctor Hugh pushed back his chair, his mouth 
twitching. 

“Whatever happens this summer, Winnie,” he 
said gravely, “something tells me that you won’t 
be bored.” 




CHAPTER III 


RAINBOW HILL 

WHITE clapboarded house with moss- 



green shutters and a dark oak “Dutch” 


door, the upper half of which swung 


hospitably open—this was Rainbow Hill in 
the light of the late June afternoon sun. A 
little jewel of a house set in the center of a close- 
cropped emerald-green lawn and circled by 
sturdy old trees, elms and maples that had 
marked the site of the old homestead and now 
guarded the “new house” as it had been called 
ever since it had been built six years before to 
replace the farmhouse destroyed by fire. 

“Welcome to Rainbow Hill,” said Mrs. 
Joseph Hildreth, coming out on the red tiled 
walk as a car swept up to the door and stopped. 

Mrs. Hildreth, the wife of the tenant farmer, 
was a young woman with wide-awake blue eyes 
and an air of capability that struck terror to the 
souls of the lazy. She was known far and wide 
as “a hustler” and she had been known to do a 


22 


RAINBOW HILL 


23 


large washing and baking in the morning and 
drive the hay rake in the field in the afternoon 
on occasions when her husband was short of help. 
It was a pity her voice was so loud and rasping, 
but then not everyone is sensitive to voices. 

“I guess you’ll find everything about ready 
for your supper,” said Mrs. Hildreth when Doc¬ 
tor Hugh had introduced Sarah and Shirley 
and Winnie, the three members of the party she 
had not met previously. “I brought up a pail 
of strawberries—they’ll be better next week. 
Mrs. Hammond said you were to have half the 
garden, same as they did. The butter may be 
a little soft, but Joe will get you a piece of ice 
in the morning at the creamery. We weren’t 
sure you’d get here to-day, so I didn’t order it.” 

With a few more confidences, directed mainly 
to Winnie, she went back to her own house—an 
attractive story and a half bungalow just visible 
from the side porch, and the Willis family were 
free to take possession of Rainbow Hill. 

“Isn’t it darling!” Rosemary kept exclaim¬ 
ing. 4 ‘Aren’t the rugs pretty—and the white 
curtains! Wait till you see the rooms upstairs.” 

In spite of Winnie’s warning that supper 
would be ready in fifteen minutes and Doctor 
Hugh’s declaration that he must go back to 





24 


RAINBOW HILL 


Eastshore as soon as the meal was over, it was 
impossible to refrain from running upstairs for 
a peep at the second story. There was a large 
and airy bedroom for the mother, a connecting 
room which was allotted to Rosemary and across 
the hall a smaller room with twin beds which 
would, it was instantly decided, “fit” Sarah and 
Shirley. Next to this was the guest room which 
Doctor Hugh would occupy during his visits, 
and at the other end of the hall, next to the 
shining blue and white tiled bathroom, a square 
room with two windows and a narrow balcony 
that delighted Winnie. 

“There’s no nicer place to dry your hair,” she 
explained seriously to Mrs. Willis. “I can sit 
out there and darn stockings while my hair is 
drying.” 

The trunks and one or two boxes, packed with 
necessary possessions mostly of a personal na¬ 
ture, had been sent on ahead in the morning and 
were already in the halls. The house was taste¬ 
fully furnished throughout and Mrs. Willis as¬ 
sured her son that as soon as she had rearranged 
a few trifles and had unpacked her treasures she 
was sure she would feel contented and at home. 

“I want to go everywhere!” declared Sarah, 
subsiding into a chair at the dining-room table 





RAINBOW HILL 


25 


with visible reluctance. “I want to see the horses 
and the cows and the pigs. Say, Hugh, do you 
think we could keep pigs when we go home? 
There’s room in the yard.” 

“You want to go to bed early and save your 
exploring until to-morrow,” advised the doctor. 
“I have to be back at the house by eight and 
that’s bed-time for one little girl I know. Shir¬ 
ley looks sleepy now.” 

“I’m not,” said Shirley automatically, her in¬ 
variable remark whenever the subject was men¬ 
tioned. 

Although the doctor had an appointment 
waiting him, he seemed to find it hard to tear 
himself away from the pleasant picture the 
mother and her three daughters made on the 
spacious side porch after supper that night. 
Winnie had insisted on displaying her conven¬ 
ient kitchen and though there was no gas range 
she declared that the oil stove would fulfill all 
her requirements except for her weekly baking 
when she would build a fire in the range. There 
were electric lights throughout the house; and 
the outbuildings, as they learned later, as well as 
the tenant house, were also wired. 

“Here comes somebody!” said Sarah in a loud 
whisper. “It’s the farmeress.” 




26 


RAINBOW HILL 


“No it isn’t, it’s two of them,” asserted Shir¬ 
ley, pressing her small nose against the wire 
screen and acquiring a plaid pattern on the tip. 

“Hush—they’ll hear you,” said Mrs. Willis, 
rising and opening the screen door as two young 
men came across the lawn. 

“Mrs. Willis?” said the taller. “Mr. Hildreth 
sent us up to see if you wanted any help, un¬ 
packing. This is Richard Gilbert,” he intro¬ 
duced his companion, “and I am Warren Baker. 
We’re working for Mr. Hildreth this summer. 

Doctor Hugh came forward at once and while 
they were being introduced the three girls 
studied the newcomers with interest. They were 
both apparently about eighteen years old, both 
deeply tanned, both slim and muscular and 
wholesome-looking. Richard Gilbert was 
slightly shorter and heavier than Warren, who 
was really thin. The latter had dark hair and 
gray eyes, while Richard’s hair and eyes were 
brown. Both boys were neatly, if not smartly, 
dressed and gave a pleasant impression of clean¬ 
liness, coolness and comfort, though they had 
done a heavy day’s work and their day had 
started at five that morning. Rosemary in¬ 
stantly decided that she liked them both. 

So did the rest of the Willis family, and Doc- 




RAINBOW HILL 


27 


tor Hugh delayed his departure till he declared 
that one more moment would, mean he must 
break the speed laws to get back to town. It had 
been arranged that he was to take his breakfast 
and dinner with the hospitable Welles, a most 
convenient plan since their house was the near¬ 
est. He was seldom home for lunch and his tele¬ 
phone calls would be taken care of at the “Jor¬ 
dan office” as Eastshore still called the rooms 
which had been occupied by the old and popular 
physician whose practise had been taken over by 
Doctor Hugh. 

Mrs. Willis watched him drive away, satisfied 
that his comfort was provided for; and then, as 
she had decreed that no unpacking was to be 
done that night, Richard and Warren took their 
leave, after promising to show the girls the whole 
farm the next morning. 

“If they know what they’re about, they’ll tie 
a rope to Sarah,” said Winnie, going about 
locking doors and windows as though she ex¬ 
pected a siege. 

She had managed to “get a good look,” as she 
said, at the visitors and had approved of them 
whole-heartedly. 

“Nice, ordinary boys,” she said to Mrs. Willis 
at the first opportunity. “Not a bit stiff or shy, 




28 


RAINBOW HILL 


did you notice, and yet not any of these smart 
Alecs that can’t stop talking long enough to 
listen to what a body has to say.” 

“What are you locking up all the windows for, 
Winnie?” Sarah questioned her, sitting down on 
the rug to take off her sandals as a preparation 
for the trip upstairs. “You’ll have to open them 
all in the morning again.” 

“Well, maybe I will,” admitted Winnie, turn¬ 
ing the key in the front door and sliding both 
bolts with emphasis, “but I won’t come down¬ 
stairs and find the parlor full of skunks and owls 
and bats—we’ll be saved that.” 

“They couldn’t get through the screens,” pro¬ 
tested Sarah, whose natural tendency to argue 
was intensified by weariness. 

“You never can tell,” was Winnie’s answer to 
this. “I’m not taking any chances in the coun¬ 
try.” 

She thought Sarah had gone up to bed and 
was startled a few minutes later, when busy in 
the kitchen, to hear the door open behind her. 

“What are you doing, Winnie?” demanded 
Sarah, her dark eyes instantly coming to rest 
on the table where, spread out in imposing array, 
were three mousetraps and the cheese with which 
Winnie intended to bait them. 





RAINBOW HILL 


29 


“If you must know,” said Winnie, exasper¬ 
ated, “I’m setting mousetraps.” 

“Oh!” Sarah gulped. “Oh, Winnie—the poor 
little mice!” 

“Now, Sarah, don’t begin all that,” Winnie 
pleaded. “I’m dead tired and I haven’t the 
heart to start a debate with you. I’ll say one 
thing and then I’m through; I don’t intend and 
nothing shall induce me, to have a lot of nasty 
little mice tramping over my pantry shelves.” 

“How do you know they will?” asked Sarah. 

“Because,” said Winnie with terrible finality. 

Sarah and Shirley were asleep two minutes 
after their heads touched the pillow; and the 
house was in darkness soon after, for they were 
all tired from the events of the day. 

In her room, though, Rosemary did not find 
that sleep came immediately. After lying 
quietly in bed, staring into the soft darkness, she 
felt more wide-awake than ever. She slipped 
softly to the floor, felt for and found her pretty 
white dressing gown and slippers—Rosemary 
was very fond of white—which were close at 
hand and, wrapping herself up comfortably, 
pattered over to the open window. 

It was a moonlight night, warm and sweet, 
and Rosemary knelt down with a little gasp at 




30 


RAINBOW HILL 


the loveliness spread before her. She rested her 
elbows on the low window sill and leaned for¬ 
ward, drinking in the scent of new hay and; 
roses and dewy grass. The shrill, insistent 
chorus of insects was music, and when the 
mournful cry of a distant hoot owl came out of 
the woods that rose shadowy and dark across the 
white ribbon of road, why that was music, too. 
Country nights are no more absolutely silent 
than nights in the town or city, but some en¬ 
chantment weaves the noises of the countryside 
into graceful harmony. The cry of a bird, the 
soft stirring of the animals in the barns, the far 
barking of a watchful dog—all these Rosemary 
heard; and the insects filled in the pauses. 

She did not know how long she had been at the 
window when, faintly—miles away, she would 
have said—she heard the notes of a violin. 

“Rosemary!” whispered someone from the 
doorway. “Are you awake, darling?” 

Mrs. Willis came across the room and knelt 
beside her daughter. 

“Did you hear it, Mother? It couldn’t be a 
violin—yes, it is! But at this time of night and 
way out in the country!” 

“Listen!” said Mrs. Willis softly. 

Rosemary had inherited her passionate love 





RAINBOW HILL 


31 


for music from her, and her delight and wonder 
were no greater than her mother’s as the music 
came nearer. Someone was playing Schubert’s 
“Serenade” in the moonlight. 

“I see him!” whispered Rosemary. “Look, 
Mother—an old man!” 

Sure enough, as they watched, a halting figure 
came down the road which the moonlight had 
changed to a silver ribbon. They knew he was 
old for he was stooped and walked with the 
shuffling gait that comes from feebleness. His 
head was bent over his violin, and as he walked 
those unearthly sweet strains melted into the 
moonlight and became a part of the silver mist. 
Just as he reached a point opposite the house 
he must have stopped. A tree hid him from the 
two watching. Probably he sat down on the 
large rock at the side of the road to rest—to rest 
and play. For, hidden from the enthralled 
listeners, he played the “Serenade” through 
twice, lovingly, delicately, with a haunting yearn¬ 
ing that held a touch of genius. Then, still play¬ 
ing, he shuffled on. They caught a glimpse of 
him as he came out from behind the tree, saw the 
light flash on his bow and he was gone. They 
listened until his music had died away in the 
distance—always the “Serenade,” over and over. 




32 


RAINBOW HILL 


“Oh—Mother!” Rosemary raised her blue 
eyes, swimming in tears. 

“Yes, dearest—” there was a little catch in 
Mrs. Willis’ tender voice. “It was very beau¬ 
tiful and very wonderful—but you must go to 
bed now. It is late.” 

Rosemary, turning drowsily to pillow her 
cheek on her hand after her mother’s kiss, was 
conscious of a hope that the old violin player 
might not lack a comfortable bed and the peace 
and security of a home—somewhere. 

“It is so nice at Rainbow Hill,” murmured 
Rosemary, drifting off into delicious slumber. 




CHAPTER IV 


FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


A REN’T you ever going to get up?” de¬ 
manded Sarah. 

Rosemary sat up and regarded her 
sister sleepily. 

‘‘Did you hear the violin?” she asked. 

“What violin?” Sarah’s surprise was an an¬ 
swer in itself. 

While she dressed, hurried by the impatient 
younger girls, for Shirley soon joined Sarah, 
Rosemary told of the music she had heard the 
night before. 

“Mother heard it, too; we both saw the old 
man,” she asserted when they were inclined to 
be skeptical and scoffed that she had been dream¬ 
ing. 

Winnie had evidently risen “with the larks” 
as she was fond of declaring (though when 
pressed by Sarah, intent on the habits and traits 
of larks, she had been forced to admit that she 
had never seen one) for the windows on the first 
33 


34 


RAINBOW HILL 


floor were unlocked and open to the fresh morn¬ 
ing air and the upper half of the Dutch door 
folded back to let in a flood of sunshine. 

“Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes,” 
Winnie greeted the girls. “Ten minutes, no 
more, no less; and you’re not to set foot out of 
the house until you’ve eaten, because I don’t in¬ 
tend to spend my time fishing Sarah out of the 
well and pulling Shirley from under a hay stack 
while the muffins are getting cold. 

Mrs. Willis, coming downstairs, cool and 
sweet in a blue linen gown, laughed at this ar¬ 
raignment but she, too, insisted that the farm 
should be seen after breakfast. 

“And do he careful about hindering Mr. and 
Mrs. Hildreth,” she cautioned them as they sat 
down at the table. “They are very busy folk, 
I know, and you mustn’t expect them to answer 
too many questions. Richard and Warren will 
have their work laid out for them and can t be 
distracted—you will have weeks to explore Rain¬ 
bow Hill and I don’t want you to feel that you 
must he shown everything in one day.” 

“I’ll help you, Mother,” promised Rosemary. 
“Sarah and Shirley can go out and play, but I’ll 
help you and Winnie unpack.” 

However, when Sarah and Shirley dashed out 




FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


35 


of the house a few minutes later, Rosemary was 
with them. Mrs. Willis had explained that her 
eldest daughter could help her more by “look¬ 
ing after” the impetuous Shirley and that un¬ 
known quantity, Sarah, than by remaining in 
the house to open the trunks and boxes. 

“I am going to do just as much as I can and 
then stop,” the mother said, smilingly. “I prom¬ 
ised Hugh and Winnie to be temperate and not 
tire myself needlessly. Hugh will probably call 
up this morning and I want to be here when he 
does. You run along with Sarah and Shirley, 
Rosemary—Mother feels safe about them when 
she knows you are with them.” 

Rosemary flushed with pleasure and resolved 
to be worthy of the confidence. She would be 
more patient than she had ever been before. 

“It’s just like Rosemary, to offer to stay in 
and help,” said Winnie, watching the three girls 
cut across the lawn in the direction of the barns, 
“you could see plain she was crazy to go out 
and look around, but she never grabs what she 
wants—that child was born unselfish.” 

Rainbow Hill was what, in the farming par¬ 
lance, is known as “an all around” place. That 
meant the owner, Mr. Hammond, believed in 
general farming as distinguished from the spe- 




36 _ RAINBOW HILL 

cialized type such as truck farming or dairying. 
Some oats and wheat were grown at Rainbow 
Hill, several acres of tomatoes raised yearly for 
the cannery, a good crop of hay harvested; there 
would be one “field crop” raised for marketing, 
generally potatoes or cabbage. The milk from a 
small herd of cows was sold at the local creamery 
and all food for the animals on the place was 
grown on the farm. How much hard work was 
bound up in the tilling of the well-ordered fields, 
the cultivation of the thrifty orchard and the 
healthy aspect presented by the live stock was 
something the three Willis girls could not be ex¬ 
pected to grasp at once. Everything was beau¬ 
tifully neat, from the freshly swept barn floor 
to the white-washed chicken houses; not a weed 
showed its head in the large vegetable garden 
and a town-bred girl might easily make the mis¬ 
take of thinking that this state of affairs was 
always to be found on every farm—something 
to be taken for granted, like fresh eggs or new 
milk. 

It was in the vegetable garden that they found 
Warren Baker. He was dressed in a clean blue 
shirt and dark blue overalls and he was on his 
knees beside a long row of thin green spikes. 

“Good morning,” he greeted the visitors 






“THIS THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE BEEN ON A FARM?” HE ASKED. 


“Rainbow Hill” 


Page 37 






































< r 




















> 








































FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


37 


politely. ‘‘Out seeing the sights? But didn’t 
you forget your hats?” 

Warren wore an immense straw hat that 
shaded the back of his neck as effectively as his 
face. 

“Oh, we don’t want to bother with hats,” said 
Rosemary carelessly. “Aren’t those onions 
you’re weeding?” 

“They’re onions,” answered Warren, “but I’m 
not weeding them; I’m thinning them. If you 
stayed in one place in the sun as long as I do, 
a hat would feel pretty good.” 

Sarah asked why he was “thinning” the onions 
and he explained that he pulled out some to give 
those left more room to grow. 

“This the first time you’ve been on a farm?” 
he asked her. 

“The first time I ever stayed on a farm,” said 
Sarah with precision. “I’ve been to different 
farms with Hugh—that’s my brother; but we 
only stayed a little while. I think, when I grow 
up, I’ll have a farm and be an animal doctor.” 

“Sarah loves animals,” Rosemary explained. 
“We’ve seen the horses in the barn and the 
chickens and the pigs; but we didn’t see a cow 
yet.” 

“Rich turns them into the lane as soon as he 



38 


RAINBOW HILL 


finishes milking,” said Warren, rising from the 
onion row. “I’ll go down and let them into the 
pasture now and you can come and see them, 
if you like.” 

“Well—you’re sure it won’t be a trouble?” 
hesitated Rosemary. 

“Mother says we mustn’t bother you,” added 
Shirley primly, speaking for the first time. 

“You can’t bother me,” said the boy so 
heartily that he reminded Rosemary of Jack 
Welles. 

“Then don’t you have to work, only when 
you want to?” suggested Sarah who uncon¬ 
sciously then and there outlined her ideals of 
labor. 

Warren, leading the way out of the vegetable 
garden, laughed. 

“Sure I have to work,” he said good-natur¬ 
edly. “If you knew Mr. Hildreth, you wouldn’t 
ask a question like that; he does two men’s work 
every day of his life and encourages everyone 
else to follow his example. But you see, I can 
talk and work, too; it’s all right to talk, if you 
don’t stop work to do it.” 

“Is it?” queried Sarah doubtfully. 

“Not a question about it,” declared Warren, 
taking down two bars for the girls to go through 




FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


39 


into a green lane fenced in on either side with a 
heavy wire fence. “Talk and work, mixed, are 
all right, but all talk and no work makes Jack 
a poor hired man—haven’t you ever heard that 
proverb?” 

Sarah puzzled over this until they came up 
with the cows and then she forgot it promptly. 
There were ten of the sleek, cream-colored bos¬ 
sies, gentle, affectionate creatures who pressed 
their deep noses trustingly into Warren’s hands 
and begged him to open the wide gate that kept 
them from the shady pasture. 

He swung the gate back and they moved 
slowly forward, beginning to crop the grass 
before they were half way through. 

“There’s a brook,” cried Shirley, catching 
sight of the water. “I want to go wading—come 
on!” 

“Not now,” said Rosemary, catching Shirley 
by her frock as though she feared that small girl 
might plunge into the stream head-first, “after 
lunch, dear, if Mother is willing.” 

“We want to do a lot of other things first,” 
Sarah reminded her. “We haven’t been up to 
the top of the windmill yet.” 

Warren turned and looked at her, a twinkle in 
his eyes. 




40 


RAINBOW HILL 


‘‘You wouldn’t like it if you got up there 
and your sash caught on the wheel,” he told her. 
“Think how you would look going round and 
round like a pinwheel. Foiks would come to look 
at you instead of the circus.” 

“I wouldn’t catch my sash,” said Sarah posi¬ 
tively. “There’s a little platform up there and 
I could stand on that. And I saw the little 
iron stairs that go up inside like a lighthouse. 

The twinkle went out of Warren Baker’s eyes 
and his pleasant voice was serious when he 
spoke. 

“There are just two places on this farm from 
which you are barred,” he said, his glance in¬ 
cluding the attentive three before him. “One is 
the windmill; the door is usually locked and I 
don’t know how it came to be left open this 
morning. But locked or not, keep out of it it 
is no place for anyone unless a mechanic wants 
to oil or repair the machinery. 

“The other place is the tool house. Mr. Hil¬ 
dreth has a hunch of fine tools and they’re the 
apple of his eye—apples, would be more ac¬ 
curate, perhaps. The tool house is usually 
locked, too, and there are only three keys; but 
if you do find it unlocked some fine morning, 
take my advice and stay outside. Or, if you 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


41 


must go in, don’t touch a tool. The rest of the 
farm is open to you and the four winds—with 
reasonable restrictions, I ought to add.” 

Three pairs of eyes stared at him so solemnly, 
that he felt uncomfortable. 

“I’m not laying down the law in my own 
name,” he said earnestly. “Mr. Hildreth is 
mighty particular about how things are run at 
Rainbow Hill and I thought I could save you fu¬ 
ture trouble by warning you. Of course I only 
work for him—‘hired man’ is my title—and very 
much at your service.” 

There was so much boyish honesty in the 
speech, so much genuine good will and an utter 
absence of attempt to strike a pose, not unmixed 
with worth-while pride and a desire that his posi¬ 
tion should be clear to them from the start, that 
even Sarah, who was quick to resent real or 
fancied efforts to “boss” her, answered his smile 
with her own characteristic grin. 

“Of course we won’t go where we shouldn’t,” 
said Rosemary warmly. “At least not now, 
when there is no excuse for not knowing.” 

But Warren, noting that Sarah became ab¬ 
sorbed in the antics of a beetle crossing her shoe, 
registered a resolve to see that the windmill door 
was kept locked. 



42 


RAINBOW HILL 


“There’s your brother,” said Shirley, pointing 
to a figure coming down the lane. 

“Rich isn’t my brother—he’s my pal,” replied 
Warren. “And Mr. Hildreth is with him, so 
you’ll have a chance to meet a real farmer and a 
good one.” 

“Then I can ask him about the insides ot 
cats,” was Sarah’s rather disconcerting response. 






CHAPTER V 


DAYS OF DELIGHT 

“IT OU’RE the doctor’s sisters,” declared 
Mr. Hildreth when he was within 
earshot. Then, to Warren, “That 
row of onions isn’t done.” 

Mr. Hildreth, the girls were to learn speedily, 
made statements. He did not ask questions. 
And usually his declarations stood unchallenged. 

He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a 
rather grim, weather-beaten face and shrewd 
blue eyes. A hard worker, his neighbors said, 
and accustomed to demanding, and receiving, 
the best from his helpers. He was intolerant of 
laziness—“shiftlessness” the country phrase ran 
—but he had the reputation of being a just task¬ 
master and he could be very kind. 

“I’m going back and finish the onions now,” 
said Warren. “I came down to let the cows 
out.” 

“Rich was late this morning,” asserted Rich’s 
employer, “because he wasted time at the cream¬ 
ery. We’re going to fix the line fence.” 

43 


44 


RAINBOW HILL 


Rosemary looked at Richard Gilbert who 
carried a box of tools. He did not seem to mind 
the accusation brought against him—though, as 
a matter of fact, he had waited to get a piece of 
ice for Winnie and this had delayed him at the 
creamery—but then Richard was not easily of¬ 
fended. He was inclined to be easy going and 
was much less apt to “fire up” than Warren. 

“I’m going with Warren,” announced Sarah, 
who liked her new friend very much and saw no 
reason for leaving him in doubt of her feelings. 

Mr. Hildreth stalked toward the brook, fol¬ 
lowed by Richard and Warren, and Sarah 
started up the lane. Rosemary, picking a but¬ 
tercup for Shirley, was surprised to hear a sud¬ 
den shout. 

“Mr. Hildreth!” yelled Sarah—there is no 
other word for it—“Mr. Hildreth! Can you 
make violin strings from a cat’s insides?” 

The farmer, knee-deep in the brook, looked 
up, startled. Rosemary stared and Shirley 
looked interested. As for Richard and Warren, 
they laughed immoderately. 

“A girl in school said you could,” went on 
Sarah, still shouting. “Violin strings, she said 
—can you?” 

“Sure—haven’t you heard cats sing at night?” 





DAYS OF DELIGHT 


45 


called back Mr. Hildreth, having recovered his 
breath. “Any cat that’s a good singer, will make 
good violin strings, Miss—er—what’s her 
name?” he questioned Richard who was holding 
up one end of the sagging wire. 

“That’s Sarah,” said Richard. 

“You ask Warren, Sarah,” called the farmer. 
“He’ll tell you.” 

And as Warren walked on, Sarah, tagging 
after him, began an exhaustive and relentless 
study of cats and violin strings. 

Richard held the wire carefully, but his danc¬ 
ing brown eyes suggested that he was not too 
busy to talk. 

“There was an old man playing the violin last 
night,” said Rosemary. “Did you hear him?” 

Richard nodded. 

“Old Fiddlestrings,” he answered. “You’ll 
probably hear him every moonlight night. Win¬ 
ter and summer he goes up and down the road 
playing his one tune.” 

“It was the ‘Serenade,’ ” said Rosemary. 
“Does he always play that? Where does he live? 
Is he poor?” 

“Not so poor as he is crazy,” declared Rich¬ 
ard sententiously. “He has enough money so 
he never has to work. He lives in a crazy little 




46 


RAINBOW HILL 


cabin on the other side of the hill and has a 
garden where he raises herbs and sells them 
they say he does a big business with the city, 

drugstores.” , . , 

“Guess you’d call it work, digging in that 
yard of his,” observed Mr. Hildreth drily. 

“Well—what I mean is, he doesn’t have to 
go out and work by the week,” explained Rich- 
ard. 

“And his music?” asked Rosemary, pulling 
Shirley back as the investigating toe of her san¬ 
dal threatened to dip into the water. „ 

“He only plays when there is a moon,” said 
Richard, his merry face sobering. “Seems like 
he can’t rest on a moonlight night. Sometimes 
he walks up and down the road for hours and 
sometimes he sits out in his yard and plays; but 
they say he never goes to bed and he never lays 
his violin down till morning.” 

“He’s a good fiddler,” said Mr. Hildreth. 

“His music was wonderful,” glowed Rose¬ 
mary. “Mother and I couldn’t go to bed as 
long as he played. I’d give anything if I could 
play like that!” 

“You play the piano just as nice!” chirped 
Shirley loyally. 

“Say, there is a piano in the house, isn’t 





DAYS OF DELIGHT 


47 


there!” Richard almost dropped the wire. “Can 
you play?” 

“Not as well as my mother,” said Rosemary, 
“but I’ve studied several years.” 

“Can you play ‘Old Black Joe’?” demanded 
Richard. “That’s a song I always liked.” 

The contrast between his cheerful, open face 
and his melancholy taste in music was so great 
that Rosemary could not help laughing. But 
she said she could play “Old Black Joe” and 
promised to play it for him at the first oppor¬ 
tunity. 

Those early days at Rainbow Hill were not 
long enough. That was the general complaint. 
Mrs. Willis and Winnie, busy in the house, said 
evening came before the delightful tasks were 
half started or the more prosaic duties com¬ 
pleted. There was the garden to be visited, the 
flower vases to be filled, the porch made cool and 
clean and comfortable, every morning; Winnie 
reveled in her kitchen, hung over the great pans 
of milk in the speckless pantry and gloated as 
she skimmed the heavy cream. Sarah said she 
saved all the cream till Hugh was expected and 
then served it up to him, whipped stiff in the 
largest bowl she could find, with fresh, hot gin¬ 
gerbread, the doctor’s favorite dessert. 





48 


RAINBOW HILL 


The girls roamed the place from one end to 
the other and knew every inch of the farm as well 
as the Hildreths did, in a week’s time. They 
came in only to sleep, Winnie declared, but Mrs. 
Willis insisted, with a gentle firmness that was 
effective even with the determined Sarah, that 
the most strenuous day should end at five o’clock. 
Then, freshly bathed and dressed, they rested 
quietly till dinner and spent the short evening 
on the porch or in the pleasant living-room. 

That living-room proved a magnet to Rich¬ 
ard and Warren. As soon as the lamp was 
lighted and Rosemary or her mother sat down 
at the piano, the boys seemed irresistibly drawn 
to the little white house. Their evenings with 
the Hildreths had been dreary in the extreme— 
both the farmer and his hard-working wife prac¬ 
tised and preached that “early to bed and early 
to rise, makes a man healthy and wealthy and 
wise”—and they either sat silently in the twilight 
until nine o’clock when they went to bed and set 
the alarm clock for five, or lit a single lamp in 
the kitchen and read agricultural papers by its 
uncertain rays. 

“I hope I can he as good a farmer as Joe 
Hildreth,” Warren once confided to Mrs. Willis, 
“but I think I’ll have one less cultivator on my 





DAYS OF DELIGHT 


49 


farm and a couple more lights in my farmhouse.” 

No wonder that the shaded lights of that other 
living-room, which cast a soft and rosy glow 
over the simple wicker furniture and cretonne 
cushions, the books and magazines and the al¬ 
ways open piano, spelled comfort and cheer to 
the lonely young fellows miles distant from rela¬ 
tives and old friends. Richard Gilbert said it 
was the books that drew him, while Warren 
thought the music lured him. In reality, it was 
the gracious, lovely presence of the mother, 
gentle Mrs. Willis who never raised her voice 
above its soft, even level, who moved noiselessly 
about the house and whose step was so light on 
the stair that one might easily not hear her cross 
the hall and enter a room. Rut she could not 
leave it that her absence was not noted and her 
low laughter missed. 

No wonder that twenty times a day the cry, 
“Where’s Mother?” sounded through the house. 
No wonder that Doctor Hugh called up every 
morning and “ran in” as often as his busy sched¬ 
ule would allow, or bore her off with him to 
inspect the progress of the building at the East- 
shore house. No wonder the nervous, driving 
energy of Mrs. Hildreth’s nature was turned 
into channels that flowed back to the little lady 




50 


RAINBOW HILL 


in the white house bearing gifts of the garden 
and dairy. And no wonder at all that two boys, 
who had never known their own mothers, found 
no words with which to tell her what her interest 
and friendship meant to them. 

In time there came to exist a tacit agreement 
between Richard and Warren that Mrs. Willis 
was not to be “worried” and in the effort to 
spare her they assumed, unconsciously, a 
brotherly guardianship over the three girls for 
which their mother was silently grateful. It 
was obvious that she could not tramp the fields 
with them and equally apparent that they would 
go wherever their healthy young active curiosity 
might lead. Richard and Warren took upon 
themselves the duties of friendly counselors— 
and had their hands full from the start. 

“Country life may be healthy,” said Winnie 
one Saturday when Doctor Hugh was spending 
the week-end at Rainbow Hill, “but I don’t 
know as I’d call it exactly beautifying. Rose¬ 
mary has a crop of freckles on her nose that will 
probably last all winter and Sarah is about as 
black as the automobile curtains. As for Shir¬ 
ley, between the briar scratches and the bruises 
on her hands and arms, she looks more like a 
strawberry plant, than a natural, human child.” 





DAYS OF DELIGHT 


51 


Winnie was genuinely grieved at the girls’ 
indifference to their looks, especially Rosemary 
of whom she was very proud, but Doctor Hugh 
declared that he liked to see folk look as though 
they lived outdoors. 

“They live outdoors all right,” Winnie in¬ 
formed him, a trifle tartly, “in fact I don’t see 
why you didn’t lug up a couple of tents and turn 
’em loose inside. Rosemary is going to be blown 
out of the window some fine night and, to my 
way of thinking, it’s better to start sleeping on 
the ground than to land there sudden like, right 
in a sound sleep.” 

Rosemary laughed. She was sitting on the 
arm of her brother’s chair and, despite the 
freckles across her nose, presented a charming 
picture of a pretty girl in a dull rose frock. 

“Fresh air is good for you, isn’t it, Hugh?” 
she demanded. “Winnie is always saying I 
ought to sleep in the ‘Cave of the Winds.’ ” 

“I wouldn’t say a word, if you’d be reason¬ 
able,” said Winnie, setting the table as she 
talked. “But it can rain or blow great guns 
and you never as much rise up to put the window 
down; you might think it was nailed up. Last 
night the rain poured in and soaked through to 
the hall ceiling and what Mrs. Hammond is go- 




52 


RAINBOW HILL 


ing to say when she sees that, I don’t know.” 

“We must have it repapered for her,” said the 
doctor lazily. “Shirley lamb, there seems to be 
something wrong with your dress—what is that 
oozing out of your pocket?” 

Winnie glanced at the discomfited Shirley. 

“It’s an egg—a fresh egg,” she said resign¬ 
edly. “I sent her out to get me one for the 
French toast and I suppose she forgot to give 
it to me. Never mind, Shirley, it’s nothing to 
sit on an egg, dearie; the mother hen does it 
every day. For goodness’ sake, what are you 
laughing at, Hughie?” 






CHAPTER VI 


WINNIE IS NERVOUS 

W HEN Doctor Hugh went back to the 
Eastshore house Sunday night, in or¬ 
der to be ready for an early Monday 
morning appointment, he took his mother with 
him. There were several things which their brief 
residence at Rainbow Hill had demonstrated 
would be immediately required, noticeably more 
frocks for Sarah. That small girl tore and wore 
out and soiled an amazing number of dresses 
within a day. Winnie, too, had a list of neces¬ 
sities and Mrs. Willis had proposed that she go 
in with Hugh and gather frocks and utensils; 
then Hugh would bring them back in the car 
and her, too. 

“You’ll be alone only one night,” Mrs. Willis 
said to Winnie. “And if you are the least bit 
nervous, I’m sure one of the boys will come up 
and sleep in the house.” 

“Now don’t you worry about us,” was Win¬ 
nie’s reply. “I guess I can take care of things 
all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of—and 
53 


54 


RAINBOW HILL 


anyway I don’t see that two women in a house 
makes it any safer than one.” 

Winnie, though she would have been the last 
to admit it, had been slightly timid at first about 
the sleeping arrangements. She had never lived 
in the country in her life and she privately 
thought the farm a lonely place, especially at 
night when, to quote her own words, “there was 
nothing nearer than the moon.” As a matter 
of fact Rainbow Hill was not an isolated pltce 
at all, there were telephone connections to the 
outside world and a private system of communi¬ 
cation with the tenant house. No one ever locked 
the house doors in that section and gradually 
Winnie’s unexpressed fears wore away. 

Mrs. Willis, in her wholesome nature, was 
seldom frightened and to her the country meant 
peace and seclusion. All the girls had been 
trained from babyhood to regard the dark as 
“kind to tired people” and each had been taught 
to go to bed alone as a matter of course. They 
had never been terrified by foolish stories and 
silly myths and so were not afraid. Rosemary 
could lock up a house as competently as the 
doctor and thought nothing of going down¬ 
stairs after the lights were out for the night to 
see if a window catch had been fastened. 





WINNIE IS NERVOUS 


55 


When bed-time came the night following the 
morning of Mrs. Willis’ departure, Winnie was 
too proud to ask Warren or Richard to spend 
the night in the house. It is quite probable that 
either or both might have offered to stay, but 
they had returned late from a trip to Benning¬ 
ton and, driving into the barn at nine o’clock, 
had decided to go to bed early. 

“Are you going to lock the doors?” asked 
Rosemary, turning on the piano bench in sur¬ 
prise as Winnie shut the front door with a bang 
and slid the heavy bolt and chain. 

“I am that,” said Winnie with emphasis. “I’m 
responsible for the rented stuff in this house and 
I don’t aim to have any of Mrs. Hammond’s 
furniture being carried off.” 

“Why Winnie, no one will take anything,” re¬ 
monstrated Rosemary. “Warren says doors are 
never locked in any of the farmhouses around 
here. There hasn’t been a tramp seen this sum¬ 
mer.” 

“And I don’t intend to have the record 
broken—not by me,” said Winnie, shutting the 
living-room windows with a bang and turning 
the catches. “I’m going out in the kitchen now 
and bolt that door.” 

Sarah and Shirley had been in bed for an 



56 


RAINBOW HILL 


hour and there was only Rosemary to accom¬ 
pany the determined Winnie on her rounds.' 
They made a thorough job of the locking up 
Winnie by preference, Rosemary by compulsion 
—and then snapped off the lights and went up¬ 
stairs together. 

“Ill leave my door open to-night, Winnie,” 
said Rosemary. “Then if you should want any¬ 
thing, you could call me.” 

“It’s going to rain,” replied Winnie ab¬ 
sently. “The wind is rising, too. Don’t let the 
ceiling get soaked again.” 

Rosemary kissed her good night—Winnie’s 
arms had been the first to hold Rosemary when 
she was born—and went into her own pretty 
room. 

She did not hurry over undressing and even 
attempted to read as she brushed her hair. Of 
course neither pleasure nor task went forward 
very smoothly, but Rosemary enjoyed the sen¬ 
sation of dawdling. She was not sleepy and it 
was pleasant to play that she was a lady of 
leisure. Then, before she was ready for bed, 
she must needs try her hair a new way and turn 
on all the lights in the room to get the effect. 

“It will be so exciting,” said Rosemary, star¬ 
ing with naive satisfaction at the pink-cheeked 





WINNIE IS NERVOUS 


57 


girl in the white kimono who stared back at her 
from the glass, “it will he so exciting to go to 
dances and parties. If I ever get to high school, 
I’ll be thankful, for then there is always some¬ 
thing happening. I hope there’s a dancing 
school that’s some good in Eastshore this 
winter.” 

At last Rosemary was ready for bed. She 
pattered over and felt of the floor under the 
two screened windows—quite dry, so the rain, if 
there had been rain, had not beat in. 

“But it isn’t raining,” said Rosemary to her¬ 
self, snapping off the lights and trying to see out 
into the darkness. “When it rains we can hear it 
on the tin roof of the porch; it is only cloudy and 
windy.” 

Mindful of her promise to Winnie, she opened 
her door—though as a rule the Willis family 
slept with individual bedroom doors closed—and 
listened for a moment, peering into the shadowy 
hall. There was not a sound and no light shone 
under Winnie’s door—it must be open and she 
was asleep. 

“How the wind does blow!” said Rosemary, 
safe in bed, wondering if she ought to get up and 
pin the muslin curtains back for they fluttered 
madly. 



68 


RAINBOW HILL 


Before she could act on this thought, she was 
asleep. How long she slept she did not know, 
but she woke to find Winnie standing beside the 
bed. 

“Rosemary!” she whispered. “Rosemary! 
There’s the most awful racket you ever heard!” 

Rosemary sat up in bed and drew the blanket 
around her. 

“What—what’s the matter?” she stammered. 

“Hush—don’t wake up Shirley and start her 
crying,” warned Winnie who looked taller than 
ever in the scant gray dressing gown she had 
pulled tightly about her. “Sarah wouldn’t wake 
if the house caved in—there, do you hear that? 

Rosemary listened intently. She shook her 
head. 

“I don’t hear anything,” she said. 

“Then come out in the hall and you will,’ ad¬ 
vised Winnie, stalking toward the door. 

Hosemary followed sleepily. She didn’t want 
to listen to noises and she couldn’t help wishing 
that Winnie had been a little harder of hearing. 

“There—hear that?” Winnie’s tone was al¬ 
most triumphant. 

Through the whole house sounded a wail that 
rose as they listened and mounted to a shriek. 
In spite of her desire to remain cool and calm, 
Rosemary shivered. 




WINNIE IS NERVOUS 


59 


“It woke me up,” whispered Winnie fear¬ 
fully. “I never, in all my born days, heard 
anything like it.” 

“What—what makes it?” said Rosemary. 

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” 
declared Winnie. I’m not afraid of anything, 
once I know what it is; but when I don’t know 
the cause, I can be scared as well as the next 
one.” 

Winnie was perfectly sincere in this state¬ 
ment. She might have added that no matter 
how badly frightened she was, she could not be 
kept from making her investigations. Now she 
prepared to go downstairs by pressing the but¬ 
ton that lighted both halls. 

“Don’t go down, Winnie,” begged Rose¬ 
mary. “I don’t believe it’s anything but the 
wind.” 

“We had a high wind one night when your 
mother was home and nothing made this kind 
of racket,” was Winnie’s retort. “You sit at 
the top of the stairs, Rosemary, and you can 
see me all the time and you won’t feel alone; 
there’s no use in you prowling around just be¬ 
cause I do.” 

“Hark—it’s raining!” Rosemary had heard 
the sound of drops on the tin roof of the porch. 




60 


RAINBOW HILL 


“I’m coming down with you, Winnie— 
wouldn’t it be nice if only Hugh were here! 

The wail sounded again, low and hesitating, 
then it began to rise. As Winnie and Rose¬ 
mary reached the level of the first floor hall 
the peak of the shriek sounded in their ears. 

“Oh, don’t go out in the kitchen!” ^Rose¬ 
mary’s voice shook with nervousness. “Win¬ 
nie, don’t go fussing around; come back in my 
room and sleep with me. We can’t hear any¬ 
thing there.” . 

“I aim to find out what—” began Winnie, 
then stopped suddenly. 

Someone was coming up the narrow flagged 
walk, someone who was whistling softly.^ 

“Hello!” came a low-voiced hail. “Hello— 
don’t be frightened—this is Warren and Rich. 
Anything the matter?” 

Rosemary promptly turned and fled and then, 
the second floor gained, turned and hung over 
the railing to watch Winnie unchain and unbolt 
and unlock the front door and then admit two 
dripping, but cheerful figures, in yellow oil¬ 
skins. 

“Raining and blowing great guns,” said War¬ 
ren’s voice. “We got up to close one of the 
windows and saw your house lighted—thought 
maybe someone was sick.” 



WINNIE IS NERVOUS 


61 


“You’re the best boys who ever breathed,” 
the grateful Winnie informed them. “Noth¬ 
ing’s the matter except I’m trying to find out 
what makes—that! Listen!” 

“You’ve left the upstair doors open,” said 
Richard promptly. “There’s something about 
the way this house is constructed that does it. 
Whenever there’s a wind of any account, all the 
second story doors have to be closed; it’s the 
one drawback. I suppose Mrs. Hildreth didn’t 
think to tell you.” 

“We left our doors open to-night, because 
we’re lonely without Mrs. Willis,” was Winnie’s 
simple explanation. “Rosemary was down with 
me, but she left when she heard you—I daresay 
she’s listening up in the hall now.” 

“Of course I am,” said Rosemary. “Ask 
Warren and Richard to stay, Winnie; there is 
the guest room all ready.” 

“You go up and go to bed this minute,” com¬ 
manded Winnie, whose invitations, like the 
queen’s, usually brooked no refusal. “Now I 
know the wind makes that howl, I’m not the 
least bit nervous, but I’d rather have someone 
around to ask in case something else turns up.” 

Nothing more of a disturbing nature “turned 
up” that night and the household settled down 




62 


RAINBOW HILL 


and slept peacefully, secure in the knowledge 
that very real protection, in the persons of the 
two husky lads, was close at hand. Winnie sum¬ 
moned them at five o’clock the next morning— 
knowing that Mr. Hildreth would not easily for¬ 
give a delayed morning start—and actually had 
coffee and her famous waffles ready for them at 
that hour. 

“Send for us any time,” grinned Warren 
when he saw the table set. 

“Any time you need aid, Winnie—or plan to 
serve waffles.” 



CHAPTER VII 


D 


AN ADVENTURE FOR SARAH 

O you have to work all the time?” 
asked Sarah plaintively. 

She sat on the top of a fence rail 
and, her feet hooked around the next bar, was 
placidly, if precariously, watching Richard Gil¬ 
bert tinkering with a cultivator that had devel¬ 
oped a sudden “kink.” 

“Well, summer is the time to work, on a 
farm,” Richard answered good-naturedly. 
“You have to cultivate the corn when there is 
corn to cultivate, Sarah.” 

Sarah nodded, her eyes on the horse which 
stood patiently waiting. 

“He’s shivering,” she said. “Look—see him 
shiver, Rich. And it is just as hot!” 

“That isn’t shivering,” replied Richard, 
glancing up from the wheel in his hand. “Solo¬ 
mon is twitching to shake a fly off—that’s all.” 

“Did he shake it off?” demanded Sarah with 
interest. 


63 


64 


RAINBOW HILL 


“I suppose so,” answered Richard absently, 
searching for a screw he had dropped in the dirt. 

“I could get the fly batter and swat flies for 
Solomon,” suggested Sarah. “He’d like that, 
wouldn’t he? I could ride on his back and hit all 
the flies, Rich.” 

“Yes, that sounds like a good scheme,” ad¬ 
mitted Richard cautiously, “but something tells 
me it wouldn’t work. If you didn’t frighten 
Solomon into fits, or start him galloping, or 
fall off and break your neck, you’d be sure to 
distract me from the work in hand and then Mr. 
Hildreth would want to know why I hadn’t fin¬ 
ished the corn. I’m afraid, Sarah, Sol will have 
to worry along in the same old way. The flies 
aren’t bad to-day, anyway.” 

“Yes they are, he’s twitching again,” said 
Sarah. “He ought to wear a window screen— 
or something.” 

She was secretly relieved that her swatter 
plan had not been accepted, for she had a 
marked aversion to killing flies. Indeed many 
a royal battle had she waged with Winnie over 
the matter of killing flies that found their way 
into the house; Sarah, left alone, would slowly 
and painfully have captured each fly alive and 
unharmed and given him his freedom via the 
front door. 




AN ADVENTURE FOR SARAH 


65 


4 'Horses sometimes wear nets—or they used 
to when they were used for driving/’ explained 
Richard, beginning to pound the wheel in place. 
“As a horse ran or trotted, the net bobbed up 
and down and was supposed to keep the flies off; 
that wouldn’t be any use when a horse is walking 
slowly around a field. A blanket would keep 
them away from Solomon, of course, but he’d 
die with the heat.” 

“I’ll invent something for him,” said Sarah 
comfortably. 

“Where are the other girls?” asked Richard 
hastily. 

A few weeks’ acquaintance with Sarah had 
already taught him the expediency of keeping 
her in action. Sarah on the move might do some 
very startling things but a contemplative Sarah 
presented possibilities that were limitless. 

“Hugh came and took Rosemary and Shirley 
with him,” answered the small girl balancing on 
the fence. “I didn’t want to go. I don’t like 
automobiles much. When I grow up, I’m going 
to have a hundred horses and pigs and cows 
and everything.” 

“That’ll be fine,” Richard approved. “There 
now, I think that will work. Have to be mov¬ 
ing on, Sarah; you going to wait for me to come 
round again?” 





66 


RAINBOW HILL 


“No, that isn’t any fun,” said Sarah with more 
frankness than politeness. “Guess I’ll go out 
to the orchard.” 

“Don’t go through the upper field,” com¬ 
manded Richard, gathering up the lines. 

Sarah scrambled down from the fence and 
reached for Solomon’s glossy black tail. 

“Why not?” she asked suspiciously. 

“Because Mr. Hildreth turned the old ram 
out to pasture there this morning, that’s why,” 
said Richard. “Here, what are you trying to 
do?” 

Sarah had grasped a handful of the horse’s 
tail and was pulling on it wildly. Old Solomon 
turned his head around and stared at her re¬ 
proachfully. 

“I want to get enough hairs to make a ring,” 
explained Sarah. “The washwoman is going to 
show me how next time she comes, but she said 
I had to get the hair.” 

“How many do you think you need?” said 
Richard, laughing as he released the tail from 
the covetous clutch of the small fingers. “You 
won’t want more than half a dozen as long as 
these; Solomon thought you meant to pull his 
tail out by the roots, didn’t you, Boy?” 

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” apologized the 
somewhat abashed Sarah. “What’s a ram?” 



AN ADVENTURE FOR SARAH 


67 


“His other name is Mr. Sheep,” said Richard, 
handing her half a dozen long black wiry hairs. 
“And he’s old and cross and has been known to 
butt people. I don’t think he’d hurt you, but 
he might frighten you.” 

“I wouldn’t be afraid,” boasted Sarah, stuff¬ 
ing her horse hairs carefully into the pocket of 
her middy blouse. “Shirley might, but I 
wouldn’t. Shall I bring you a sweet apple, 
Rich?” 

“If you find any,” he said, swinging the cul¬ 
tivator back into place and clucking to Solomon 
to go ahead. “I can’t eat green rocks, you 
know, and you shouldn’t.” 

Sarah, in spite of warnings and orders, in¬ 
sisted on trying to eat everything in the shape 
of an apple that tumbled to the ground under 
the orchard trees. No fruit was too green for 
her palate, no round, bullet-like sphere too hard 
for her small white teeth. 

She crawled through the fence now, waved a 
farewell to Richard, who was well on his way 
to the corner of the cornfield, and trotted off to 
search the orchard for spoils. 

Sarah amused herself without much trouble— 
“though as much can’t be said for the rest of 
us,” Winnie had once remarked when Sarah’s 





68 


RAINBOW HILL 


efforts to entertain herself had involved the en¬ 
tire family in explanations with nervous neigh¬ 
bors who objected to tame white mice—and the 
life at Rainbow Hill suited her exactly. She 
not only visited the horses and cows and pigs 
regularly, made friends with the flock of sheep 
and claimed to know every fowl in the poultry 
yard by name and sight, but she had a tender 
word for every bug, spider and grasshopper she 
met. Little water snakes were Sarah’s delight 
and not even the ants and worms were beneath 
her notice and affection. Truly, as Doctor 
Hugh said, Sarah was certainly intended to live 
in the country. 

“I’d like to see a ram,” she said to herself as 
she scrambled up the bank to the orchard. “I 
never saw one. It wouldn’t do any harm to go 
around the upper pasture and look in.” 

But she had a number of things to do in the 
orchard first. Sarah was noted for her thor¬ 
oughness in whatever she undertook and now 
her heart was set on finding an apple soft enough 
for Richard Gilbert to eat—and just a plain 
apple for Miss Sarah Willis. Alas, Mrs. Hil¬ 
dreth had been out earlier in the day and had 
carefully picked up every windfall. She and 
Winnie were adepts at making delicious apple 




AN ADVENTURE FOR SARAH 


69 


sauce and the first summer apples were scarce 
enough to be carefully hunted for. 

So, though Sarah went the rounds of every 
tree and even shook one or two cautiously (Mr. 
Hildreth had intimated that he would “shake” 
anyone detected trying to knock down green 
apples or pears and Sarah had a wholesome re¬ 
spect for his mandates, so far) but she was 
forced to go appleless. 

“I think I’d better go look at my apple seed 
I planted,” said Sarah aloud. 

She had borrowed the coal shovel from Winnie 
a few days previous and with much effort and 
earnestness, had planted a plump seed from an 
apple in a sunny, open space in the orchard. 
The apple was exceedingly green, but aside from 
doubtful fertility, the seed was doomed never to 
sprout because of the overwhelming curiosity 
of its small planter. Sarah had “looked” at that 
seed each day since planting it. 

“If all these trees didn’t grow any faster than 
my seed,” mourned Sarah, scratching around in 
the soil with an oyster shell, the shovel having 
been confiscated by Winnie, “I don’t see how 
people get any apples to eat.” 

Then a large—a very large—black ant hurry¬ 
ing up the trunk of a young pear tree, caught 




70 


RAINBOW HILL 


her eye and she stopped to study him. She 
thought for a moment of writing her name and 
address on a piece of paper and tying it to him 
so that at some distant date, say a hundred years 
ahead, another little girl might find the ant and 
read that Sarah had also known him. 

“If a turtle lives sixty years, why can’t an ant 
live a hundred?” Sarah asked the black crow 
who sat on a branch and stared at her. “Only, 
I haven’t any paper or pencil or thread to tie 
it on with—so I’ll wait.” 

With this sensible conclusion she turned her 
attention to the swing Warren had put up for 
her and Shirley on a conveniently low limb of 
an apple tree. Sarah did not swing sedately— 
she must do that as she did everything else, fast 
and furiously. She took out the notched board 
that served as a seat and stood up in the loop, 
jerking herself forward and backward until she 
attained the desired speed. Swooping down in 
one of these mad rushes, she caught sight of 
something moving in the next field. 

“There’s the ram!” she thought. “I’ll go see 
what he looks like”; and jumping out of the 
swing she ran over to the wire fence that en¬ 
closed the orchard on three sides. 

“He doesn’t look cross—you’re not, are you?” 




AN ADVENTURE FOR SARAH 


71 


said Sarah, addressing the Roman-nosed wooly 
creature that stood gravely regarding her. 

The flock of sheep were up at the other end 
of the field and the ram stood alone. Perhaps 
he had glimpsed the flashing of Sarah’s frock 
through the trees as she swung and had come 
down to see what made the fluttering. Sarah 
was quite enchanted with him and thought he 
looked lonely. 

She dropped to her knees and crawled through 
the fence, holding back the heavy wire strands 
with difficulty, and sat down on the grass to 
pull up her socks, brush her hair out of her eyes 
and tuck in a handful of gathers at her waist¬ 
line where her skirt had torn loose from the 
band. 

Having made herself neat for the introduc¬ 
tion, Sarah advanced fearlessly to greet the ram. 
To her surprise he came toward her with lowered 
head, and something in his wicked little eyes 
made her uneasy. The next thing she knew, she 
felt a terrific impact against her legs and down 
she went with a thud. She had presence enough 
of mind to roll over and she kept rolling, in a 
frantic instinct to get out of the way of that 
powerful head. Dizzy and shaken—for she 
had fallen heavily—she scrambled to her feet and 




72 


RAINBOW HILL 


began to run, the ram coming after her val¬ 
iantly. 

“Rosemary! Mother! Rich—Rich! War¬ 
ren!” screamed poor Sarah, running as she had 
never run before, “Rich! Rich!” 

It was Warren who heard her and reached 
her first. He had been working in the tomato 
field which was near the orchard and he had no 
horse to consider—Richard could not abandon 
Solomon in the middle of the cornfield. War¬ 
ren ran in the direction of the cries and, leap¬ 
ing the dividing fence, came to the rescue. The 
ram stopped short as soon as he saw him and 
Sarah fled straight into Warren’s protecting 
arms. 

“There, there, you’re all right—you couldn’t 
run like that if you were hurt,” he soothed her. 
“Don’t cry, Sarah—see, here comes your 
Mother; you’ve frightened her. And Winnie, 
too! Look up and smile and wave your hand— 
don’t let your mother be frightened, Sarah.” 

Mrs. Willis had heard Sarah’s shrieks and 
now she was running across the field, Winnie 
imploring her to walk at every step. 

“She isn’t hurt!” called Warren, trying to 
relieve the mother’s anxiety at once. “She’s all 
right, Mrs. Willis.” 




AN ADVENTURE FOR SARAH 


73 


And then Sarah gained her vocal powers of 
which, till this minute, she had been deprived. 
Fright and running had taken her breath and 
she almost choked with the effort to articulate. 
Lifted high in Warren’s arms, the tears run¬ 
ning down her face, Sarah managed to put her 
chief sorrow into words that reached her mother 
and Winnie half way across the pasture and 
Richard just breathlessly rounding the orchard. 

“I lost my horse hairs!” screamed Sarah. 




CHAPTER VIII 


STOEM SIGNALS 

R OSEMARY, seated on the lowest porch 
step, was outwardly “cool and calm 
* and collected,” to borrow one of Win¬ 
nie’s favorite phrases. She was dressed all in 
white and Doctor Hugh, coming from the shed 
where he had put his car, noted appreciatively 
what a lovely dash of color the blue wool she 
was knitting made in the picture. It just 
matched her eyes, he thought. 

“Hello, sweetheart!” he greeted her, and then, 
as she raised her face to kiss him, why, what s 
the matter?” 

For the blue eyes were mutinous and stormy 
and it, was easy to see that Rosemary was un- 
happy. 

“Oh, Hugh! Don’t go in right away—I 
never get a chance to talk to you, she said, mov¬ 
ing over to give him room to sit on the step. 
“Everyone will have a thousand things to tell 
you—it was that way last Sunday. I suppose 


STORM SIGNALS 


75 


if we see you only once a week, or every other 
week, it’s natural, but I wish I could ever talk 
to you without Shirley or Sarah asking you 
questions at the same time.” 

Doctor Hugh laughed as he took off his hat and 
dropped down beside his sister. 

“Seems to me you have a good deal of energy 
for such a warm day,” he commented, running 
his fingers through his thick dark hair. “Doesn’t 
that breeze feel good, though! Eastshore has 
been becalmed this week and the dust from the 
plastering has settled on everything in the house 
—I’m glad Mother can’t see it. And where is 
Mother, Rosemary?” 

“Lying down,” answered Rosemary, begin¬ 
ning to purl. “She didn’t expect you for an 
hour. Sarah and Shirley went to town with 
Warren—he had to go over and get a bolt or 
something, so Mother let them go. How far has 
Mr. Greggs got with the building, Hugh?” 

“Well, you know he isn’t naturally swift,” 
said the doctor cautiously, “and he and his helper 
have more labor troubles than any union I ever 
heard of—they differ continuously. But I will 
say that the lawn is piled high with lumber and 
bricks and I never come home at night that I 
don’t have to chase a dozen boys away—kids 




76 


RAINBOW HILL 


who think I’m a grouch because I won’t have 
them breaking their necks at my front door. 
Jack Welles says I ought to take patients wher¬ 
ever I find them and not be too particular.” 

“Tell me about Jack,” Rosemary said, smil¬ 
ing. 

“Jack is the same old Jack,” declared the doc¬ 
tor. “He works in the garden, when his father 
makes him, and he goes fishing as often as the 
law allows. I believe he and half a dozen of the 
high school boys are going camping next week 
and Jack is counting on coming up here in 
August when I take my two weeks off. He’s 
determined to work—asked me to speak to Mr. 
Hildreth about a job while I am here.” 

“Warren and Richard will be glad, if he does 
come,” asserted Rosemary. “They think Mr. 
Hildreth ought to have another man all the time 
—Warren was grumbling because he had to go 
after the bolt this afternoon; he said it would 
put him back two hours.” 

The doctor watched the busy needles clicking 
placidly for several minutes. Then— 

“And now, as we feel a little more serene,” he 
said quietly, “suppose you tell me what was the 
trouble when I came.” 

“The trouble?” fenced Rosemary. “What 
trouble?” 



STORM SIGNALS 


77 


“She thinks she can fool me,” said Doctor 
Hugh, apparently addressing his remark to the 
solitary white hen that wandered around a bush 
on the lawn at that moment. “She thinks I 
don’t know the signals—those famous storm sig¬ 
nals. She thinks I didn’t know the moment I 
looked at her that she wanted something she 
couldn’t have.” 

“I had—an argument,” admitted Rosemary 
with hot cheeks. “It was all Winnie’s fault.” 

“Yes?” said her brother politely. 

“It was, Hugh, honestly it was. Winnie is as 
good as gold, but I do wish she wouldn’t try to 
look after me, as she calls it. I can look after 
myself. Mother would let me do lots of things, 
if it wasn’t for Winnie.” 

“Here, here, you’ll have to take out all that 
knitting, if you’re not careful,” warned the doc¬ 
tor, for the blue eyes were stormy again and 
Rosemary was knitting furiously. “What was 
this particular argument about?” 

“I want to sleep outdoors,” explained Rose¬ 
mary. “I could take out a quilt and spread it on 
the grass and a blanket to cover me—I’ve never 
done it and it would be such fun. And Winnie 
says if I must be crazy can’t I wait till I get 
back to Eastshore? As if anyone ever slept 





78 


RAINBOW HILL 


out on the grass in town where everyone can see 
you!” 

“No, that wouldn’t be exactly the thing to 
do,” agreed Doctor Hugh, his lips twitching. 
“Well, Rosemary?” 

“First Mother said I could, and then, after 
Winnie had talked to her, she said she thought 
it wouldn’t be best,” reported Rosemary. “Win¬ 
nie told her a cow might step on me—and all the 
cows are in the barnyard or the pasture at six 
o’clock and never get out!—or, she said, some¬ 
one might come and carry me off! And where 
would I be, while they were carrying me?” de¬ 
manded Rosemary with intense scorn. “I’d like 
to see anyone carry me off!” 

“I hope this ‘argument’ didn’t degenerate into 
a clash,” said the doctor seriously. “You know 
how it tires Mother to have to hear these quar¬ 
rels, Rosemary, and to be constantly called upon 
to act as arbitrator.” 

“I banged the door,” confessed Rosemary. “I 
can’t help it, Hugh, I always lose my temper 
when I argue. And Winnie kept saying the 
same thing a hundred times—I don’t see why I 
shouldn’t sleep outdoors, do you?” 

“If mother has said ‘no,’ there’s one hard and 
fast reason,” pronounced her brother. “But I 





STORM SIGNALS 


79 


believe in the value of experience as a teacher, 
especially for strong-willed little girls who are 
slow to learn that their own way isn’t the best 
in the world. Good gracious, that isn’t Sarah, 
is it?” 

He broke off abruptly as an energetic figure 
advanced toward him, waving two small hands 
black with grease, in welcome. It was Sarah, 
a Sarah whose socks were down to her ankles 
and whose dress was torn and spotted with the 
same black grease that liberally anointed her 
face as well as her hands. Her dark, straight 
hair straggled into her eyes and there was a large 
bump on her forehead that evidently gave her 
little concern. 

Behind her trotted Shirley, a little less dis¬ 
heveled, a little less dirty and quite as radiantly 
content. 

“You look nice,” said Rosemary severely. “I 
should have thought Warren would have been 
ashamed to ride home with you—where is he? I 
didn’t see the wagon drive past.” 

“Mr. Hildreth made him turn into the field, 
without going to the barn,” explained Sarah, 
standing at a safe distance from Doctor Hugh 
who would, she was sure, see the bump even 
under a layer of dirt. “We had lots of fun, 





80 


RAINBOW HILL 


Rosemary; the wheel came off and I helped 
Warren put it on again.” 

“And I had a chocolate ice cream cone,” said 
Shirley, standing on tip-toe to kiss her brother 
and leaving small finger marks on his collar as 
visible marks of her affection. 

“I’d better go and get washed up,” an¬ 
nounced Sarah blandly, though to her hearers’ 
knowledge this was the first time on record she 
had made such a suggestion voluntarily. 

“Come here, Sarah,” said Doctor Hugh 
quietly, “I want to look at that bruise on your 
forehead.” 

“That isn’t anything,” Sarah assured him, 
backing off. 

“Come here and let me see it,” the doctor re¬ 
peated and, as Sarah reluctantly approached 
him, “how did you get it?” 

“I was under the wagon,” said Sarah, wincing 
slightly as Doctor Hugh felt of the bruise with 
firm, practised fingers, “and I heard Warren 
coming and I jumped up and hit my head.” 

She did not think it necessary to add that 
Warren had requested her to stay in the road 
and not crawl under the broken wagon. 

“All right, the skin isn’t broken,” announced 
the doctor. “But it aches a little doesn’t it, 
dear?” 





STORM SIGNALS 


81 


U A little,” nodded Sarah, winking to keep 
back the tears. 

He put an arm around her, heedless of the 
dirt and grease. 

“That won’t last long,” he promised, “and if 
you and Shirley will go in and get washed and 
dressed without dawdling, I’ll take you for a 
little drive before dinner.” 

“Rosemary, too?” asked Shirley, balancing 
like a butterfly on the top step. 

“Rosemary, too.” 

Forgetting her aching bump, Sarah followed 
Shirley into the house with a shout, and the 
sound of their feet clattering up the open stair¬ 
way proclaimed their intentions of not wasting a 
minute. 

“Here comes Mrs. Hildreth,” said Rosemary 
in a low voice. “I wish I could fix her just once 
—she doesn’t know how to be pretty.” 

Rosemary, with uncanny penetration, had hit 
upon the truth. Mrs. Hildreth did not know how 
to be pretty. She would have said she had not 
the time to “fuss with her looks,” but it would 
have taken little extra time to have done her 
really abundant hair in a becoming style instead 
of the tight knot into which she invariably 
twisted it. And surely, if she could don that 




82 


RAINBOW HILL 


clean, starched dark calico dress in five minutes, 
it would have taken no longer to put on a pretty 
light-colored frock. 

“I thought your brother would be out to spend 
Sunday,” said Mrs. Hildreth capably, in her 
high-pitched, nervous voice, “so I brought up 
two extra bunches of asparagus. Winnie told 
me the doctor liked it.” 

“Winnie has my likes and dislikes down pat,” 
declared Doctor Hugh, rising and shaking 
hands. “Will you come in, Mrs. Hildreth? My 
mother will be down in a minute.” 

Rosemary took the asparagus and seconded 
the invitation. 

“No, thanks, I can’t stay,” said Mrs. Hil¬ 
dreth, rather regretfully. “I have to tend to the 
chickens and get the milk pans and strainers 
ready and do a lot of little chores before I get 
supper. You use your porch a lot, don’t you?” 

“Yes,” said Rosemary who, she had once told 
her mother, always felt as though Mrs. Hil¬ 
dreth’s sharp eyes condemned her as lazy. “We 
all love to be out of doors.” 

“I’m outdoors most of the time,” said Mrs. 
Hildreth, “but I don’t have time to sit on the 
porch, unless it is Sunday afternoons.” 

She went back to her work and Rosemary, re- 



STORM SIGNALS 


83 


turning from delivering the asparagus to Win¬ 
nie, found her mother and an immaculate Sarah 
and Shirley entertaining Doctor Hugh. He 
brought the car around presently and they went 
for the promised drive to Bennington, the pretty 
county seat, and back. 

After dinner that evening Rosemary, quite re¬ 
stored to good humor, was surprised to have a 
question put to her. 

“How would you like to try sleeping out¬ 
doors to-night, Rosemary ?” asked Doctor Hugh 
placidly. 




CHAPTER IX 


ONE WISH COMES TRUE 


R OSEMARY answered her brother’s ques¬ 
tion characteristically. 

- “Oh, Hugh! I’d love to.” 

“Well, don’t tell Sarah or Shirley,” he cau¬ 
tioned, “because I don’t want a riot—wait till 
they have gone to bed and then at nine o’clock, 
if you really want to try the experiment, you 
may.” 

“Won’t Mother care?” asked Rosemary 
doubtfully. 

“I’ve talked it over with Mother, and she is 
willing to let you try the plan while I am here,” 
said the doctor. “It is a clear warm night and 
too early in the season for heavy dews, so there 
could not be a better time. You’d find it harder 
to go to sleep if there were a moon, so that’s in 
your favor, too.” 

“I wouldn’t want to sleep outdoors on a moon¬ 
light night,” declared Rosemary decidedly. 
“Old Fiddlestrings—Warren says everyone 
84 


ONE WISH COMES TRUE 


85 


calls him that—would be walking up and down 
the road, playing the ‘Serenade.’ I’d rather 
sleep outdoors in the dark—as soon as you are 
used to it, it isn’t dark at all and I love to see the 
stars.” 

It seemed to Rosemary that Sarah and Shir¬ 
ley must have turned back the hands of the clock 
to delay their bed hour. They monopolized 
their brother, seated on either side of him in the 
porch swing while the summer dusk slowly deep¬ 
ened and Mrs. Willis rested in the big chair 
which had an arm strong and broad enough to 
hold Rosemary who knitted with outward calm 
and inward fever. Were those children never 
going to bed? 

Winnie had gone over to the bungalow with 
Mrs. Hildreth, who was delighted to have some¬ 
one with whom to exchange household lore, and 
Warren and Richard had tactfully betaken 
themselves to Bennington, knowing instinctively 
that Doctor Hugh would like to have his family 
to himself for one brief evening, after a week’s 
separation. 

“Too dark to knit, Rosemary,” he said at last. 
“And don’t turn on the light, dear; can’t you be 
content to do nothing for a little while?” 

“Time for bed, Shirley,” announced Mrs. 




86 


RAINBOW HILL 


Willis. “Run along and see how nearly un¬ 
dressed you can be before Mother conies up.” 

Shirley obediently clambered down and 
looked at them wistfully. Her bed hour was 
half-past seven and Sarah had the privilege of 
staying up till eight o’clock. She clung jeal¬ 
ously to this prerogative and as a rule nothing 
would induce her to go to bed when Shirley did. 
She might fall asleep on sofa or rug, but she 
would protest vigorously, if sent upstairs be¬ 
fore the eight strokes of the clock were heard. 
Thirty minutes at bed-time marked the differ¬ 
ence to Sarah between six and nine years old. 

“I’ll come up with you to-night, honey,” said 
Doctor Hugh. “I don’t believe I’ve forgotten 
how to put you to bed. Sit still, Mother.” 

“Are you going to tell a story, Hugh?” asked 
Sarah anxiously. “Are you, Hugh?” 

“Will you, Hugh?” begged Shirley. “Tell 
about the little boy in the hospital who wouldn’t 
eat his supper? Will you, Hugh?” 

“All right, I will,” promised the doctor, “if 
you’ll march upstairs this minute.” 

“I’m coming, too,” announced Sarah. “I was 
up early this morning, wasn’t I, Mother?” 

“Yes indeed you were,” agreed her mother, 
catching her as she scrambled past and holding 



ONE WISH COMES TRUE 


87 


her tightly—Sarah usually had to be caught or 
pursued if one wanted to kiss her. “Kiss Mother 
good night, dearest.” 

Mrs. Willis understood perfectly that Sarah 
was saving her pride when she spoke of being up 
early that morning—some excuse had to be 
made to explain her willingness to go to bed 
when Shirley did. 

“If Sarah had known I’m going to sleep out¬ 
doors to-night, she would have been wild to 
come, too,” said Rosemary, when she and her 
mother were left alone. 

“Are you sure you want to try it, dear?” asked 
Mrs. Willis. 

“Why Mother, I’ve always wanted to sleep 
outdoors!” cried Rosemary earnestly. “I’m so 
tired of ordinary beds and houses—and—and 
things. It will be perfectly lovely to lie under 
a tree and see the stars over my head and pre¬ 
tend I am out on the desert. I’d like to sleep 
outdoors every night.” 

When Doctor Hugh came down to report that 
both little girls were asleep, he found his mother 
and sister knitting under the shaded porch light. 

“I don’t approve of night work for women,” 
he informed them gravely. “Especially for 
those who have had as active a day as you have 



88 


RAINBOW HILL 


had. You don’t want to knit, do you, Mother?” 

She put down her work at once and smiled. 

“I’ll play for you,” she said quickly and went 
in to the piano. 

Doctor Hugh sat down in the swing and 
patted the pillows invitingly. Rosemary, fasten¬ 
ing her needles securely in place, put down her 
work a little reluctantly and crossed over to the 
swing. But when he put his arm about her and 
she leaned back against the cushions, her head 
on his comfortable shoulder, she gave a little 
tired sigh of relief. A big brother was nice! 

And as the music drifted out to them—all the 
sweet old melodies the doctor loved best, played 
as only Mrs. Willis could play them—Rosemary 
felt her impatience and hurry slipping away. 
She who had been so eager to have nine o’clock 
come, so anxious to get the evening over so that 
she might be free to put her wish into practise, 
began to wish that she could stay up later than 
usual. 

“Ten minutes after nine,” said Doctor Hugh, 
all too soon. “I must help you get your sleep¬ 
ing outfit together.” 

“Oh, I’ll just take a quilt and spread it out 
and then roll myself up in it,” planned Rose¬ 
mary. 




ONE WISH COMES TRUE 


89 


But Doctor Hugh insisted on a rubber sheet, 
to go under the heavy quilt and insure positive 
protection from dampness; and blankets, he de¬ 
clared, would be indispensable. He arranged 
the quilt under a maple tree—the tree most dis¬ 
tant from the house—which was Rosemary’s 
choice, carried out a pair of light blankets and 
parried Winnie’s volley of questions good-na¬ 
turedly when she came in from visiting Mrs. 
Hildreth and discovered what he was doing. 

“Well, Rosemary, I see you’re going to have 
your own way and I only hope you don’t regret 
it,” was Winnie’s greeting when Rosemary 
danced out, a dark kimono over her gown and 
moccasins on her feet. 

“I won’t,” Rosemary replied confidently. 

“Of course I won’t,” she said to herself 
stoutly, when she was curled up on a quilt, under 
the blankets. “This is heaps of fun!” 

She could see the light from the porch lamp 
which made a golden shaft through the wire 
netting into the darkness of the night. Over 
her head the stars twinkled and the leafy 
branches of the maple spread out like a network. 

Pouf!—Rosemary scrambled to her feet, 
brushing at her face frantically. 

“Something fell on me!” she gasped. “A bug 
—I’m almost sure it was a bug!” 





90 


RAINBOW HILL 


But after feeling around on the quilt and 
finding nothing that felt like a bug, she decided 
that after all it might have been a leaf. She 
didn’t mind the thought of a leaf tumbling down 
on her nose, so she carefully smoothed out the 
tumbled quilt, shook the blanket and laid them 
straight and went to bed again. 

Usually she fell asleep readily, but to-night 
she did not feel sleepy. 

“I wonder what time it is?” she meditated, 
turning sideways so that if another leaf—or bug 
—should drop it would not fall on her face. “I 
wish I’d brought my little clock.” 

Presently she heard the sound of horse’s hoofs 
on the road, soon saw the winking white light 
turn into the drive that led to the barn. She 
watched it moving slowly forward, saw it stop 
and knew that Richard and Warren were har¬ 
nessing outside the barn. In another moment 
the light flickered out as Warren backed the 
runabout into the shed and Richard led the horse 
to a stall. The hollow echo of the barn door as 
Richard slammed and bolted it, came next. She 
thought she could see the dim outline of two 
figures walking toward the bungalow but that 
might have been imagination. 

Rosemary sighed and twisted about uneasily 




ONE WISH COMES TRUE 


91 


to face the other way. The porch light was out! 
That meant her mother and Hugh had gone to 
bed and she was utterly alone on the lawn. She 
felt inexplicably abandoned—Hugh might have 
whistled to her, to see if she were asleep, before 
he turned off the light. That, thought Rose¬ 
mary, would not have been much to do. 

She decided to lie flat on her back for a while. 
In that position she might begin to feel sleepy. 
It was not a pitch-black night, indeed the dark¬ 
ness seemed half luminous—the kind of light in 
which, after the eyes have grown accustomed to 
it, it is possible to make out the outlines of ob¬ 
jects quite plainly. Rosemary knew she could 
not be mistaken when she saw a shadowy form 
on the other side of the lawn. 

She sat up with a jerk, staring. Yes, some¬ 
thing was certainly moving. Frantically she re¬ 
called her arguments that all animals slept at 
night. How foolish she had been to advance a 
statement of that sort. Vividly now she remem¬ 
bered stories heard and read of night marauders 
—foxes, weasels—skunks! These prowled about 
at night and she wouldn’t care to come in con¬ 
tact with any of them. 

“Snakes!” whispered Rosemary with a sud- 




92 


RAINBOW HILL 


den prickling of her scalp. “Do they go around 
at night, I wonder? Sarah would know.” 

But Sarah, the naturalist, was safely asleep 
in her own bed. Rosemary suddenly envied both 
her sisters. She remembered that Mrs. Hildreth 
had spoken of the warfare she waged against 
rats which tried to carry off the young poultry 
at night—Rosemary, in imagination, could pic¬ 
ture a procession of rats running over her as she 
slept, on their way to the hen houses. 

She got gingerly to her feet, straining her 
eyes to see the moving object. What could it 
be? Something brushed past her, close to her 
face. Instantly Winnie’s horror of bats came 
to the girl’s nervous mind. 

“If the screen door is unlocked, I’m going in,” 
whispered Rosemary, gathering her kimono 
tightly about her. “Sarah may like animals but 
I don’t.” 

She started as the mournful cry of a hoot owl 
sounded in the distance—and then something 
cold and wet touched her hand! With one bound 
Rosemary cleared the quilt and ran like a deer 
across the grass. The shadowy object she had 
seen came toward her, moving slowly. Rose¬ 
mary dodged, tripped on her kimono and fell. 

She was up again in a moment and running 




ONE WISH COMES TRUE 


93 


again, her breath coming in little sobbing gasps. 
Jack Welles had once said that she did not “hap¬ 
pen to be the screaming kind of girl” and though 
terrified now she made no outcry. She gained 
the porch step, tugged frantically at the screen 
door and felt it open in her grasp. She pitched 
forward, striking her knee against a chair and 
felt herself caught in a strong, firm clasp. For 
a moment she struggled furiously and silently 
and then realization came to her. 

“Oh, Hugh!” she cried. “Hugh! There’s 
something out there!” 




CHAPTER X 


AN EVENTFUL DAY 

D OCTOR HUGH snapped on the porch 
lamp, carefully turning the shade to 
shield Rosemary’s eyes from the sud¬ 
den light. He was fully dressed and had evi¬ 
dently been dozing in the swing. 

“Hush—don’t wake Mother!” he said warn- 
ingly. “What frightened you, dear?” 

Rosemary’s face was quite white and her wide, 
startled eyes gave eloquent testimony that she 
had been alarmed. 

“Something wet touched me—wet and cold,” 
she whispered. “And there was something else 
moving around, too. I ran as fast as I could.” 

“Some of the farm animals out for a stroll,” 
said Doctor Hugh with a quiet assurance that 
his sister found most comforting. “What do 
you say to going to bed now, dear, and investi¬ 
gating in the morning?” 

“Oh, yes,” agreed Rosemary. “Is it nearly 
morning, Hugh?” 


94 



AN EVENTFUL BAY 


95 


The doctor consulted his watch. 

“It is just eleven o’clock,” he said quietly. 
“Try not to make a noise as you go upstairs for 
I hope Mother is asleep. I’ll turn the lamp so 
that it will light you as far as the landing.” 

So she had been out there only two hours, 
thought Rosemary as she tumbled intq her own 
bed. Two hours! 

“It seemed like two years!” she murmured, 
drifting off into a peaceful sleep almost in¬ 
stantly. 

She woke in the morning to find the others 
downstairs, breakfast over and all traces of her 
couch under the maple tree removed. 

“I know Hugh did that,” she said to herself 
gratefully as she dressed. Her first act had been 
to run to the window to see if the quilt was 
spread out on the grass. “He’ll never give me 
away, either. And I know, too, he would have 
stayed out on the porch all night, if I hadn’t 
come in, just so he would be on hand to help me 
when I needed him. Hugh is so dear to me!” 

She said something of this to him late that 
afternoon, following him out to the barn when 
he went to get the car, preparatory to making 
the trip back to Eastshore. Sarah and Shirley 
had remained in ignorance of the brief experi- 



96 


RAINBOW HILL 


ment and Winnie had proved extremely tact¬ 
ful, asking no questions at all. Rosemary had 
learned, from the conversation of Warren and 
Richard, that a cow had strayed from the pas¬ 
ture and a blind old sheep had cropped the grass 
all night. It had been the wet nose of the cow 
that touched her hand and she had clumsily 
dodged the sheep. 

“You're so good, Hugh,” said Rosemary, 
pretending to polish the foredoor handle. “But 
I won’t want to sleep outdoors ever again—did 
you know I wouldn’t?” 

Doctor Hugh smiled a little. 

“We’ll all go camping some day and you’ll 
love’ sleeping outdoors, as you say,” he de¬ 
clared. “My dear little sister, I would be the 
last person to try to discourage you in that 
effort. But Mother knew and Winnie knew and 
I knew that, for a number of reasons, it isn’t 
practical for you to try to sleep outdoors here; 
neither practical nor necessary. It wasn’t a 
matter of sleeping outdoors, Rosemary—it was 
just the same old question, ‘Why can’t I have 
my own way?’ Now wasn’t it?” 

Rosemary blushed, but her eyes met his hon¬ 
estly. 

“Yes, I guess it was,” she admitted. “But 



AN EVENTFUL DAY 


97 


I’m sorry I was so obstinate—truly I am, 
Hugh.” 

Doctor Hugh leaned forward from behind the 
wheel and kissed her. 

“You’ll make the Willis will an aid and not a 
hindrance yet,” he declared. “All I want to do, 
dear, is to save you from learning these lessons 
the most painful way. Hop in and I’ll drive 
you around to the house,” he added cheerfully. 

The next morning was naturally a most busy 
one at Rainbow Hill. Monday morning is apt 
to be a busy time anywhere, but Mrs. Hildreth, 
who would sooner have dreamed of starting the 
day without breakfast than starting the week 
without washing, saw to it that not one idle 
moment was unaccounted for as far as her 
jurisdiction extended. She rose at four, in¬ 
stead of the customary five, and Warren and 
Richard, alternating, helped her with filling and 
emptying the tubs and lifting the heavy boiler. 
Mrs. Hildreth scorned the modern washing ma¬ 
chine and did her clothes in the old-fashioned 
laborious way. 

Winnie had a woman to help her wash—a 
Mrs. Pritchard who cheerfully walked two miles 
each way—but the temptation to bleach the 
household linens on the lawn in the hot sunshine 



98 


RAINBOW HILL 


appealed powerfully to the housewifely in¬ 
stincts of Winnie, and Mrs. Willis declared that 
she washed everything she came to, regardless of 
its state of cleanliness. Certainly one would 
have thought that her normal wash of light sum¬ 
mer dresses for three girls and two women 
would have contented Winnie, but the combina¬ 
tion of soft water, soap, floods of sunshine and 
the washing machine left by Mrs. Hammond 
proved well nigh irresistible to Winnie. She 
may have been said to fairly revel in wash. 

“Let’s go wading, Rosemary,” coaxed Shir¬ 
ley this Monday morning, soon after breakfast. 

“I can’t—not now,” said Rosemary. “I want 
to help Mother first and then I must practise. 
Ask Sarah.” 

“Sarah’s cross,” complained Shirley. “She 
brought the cat in from the barn and put her to 
sleep in the clothes basket and Winnie tipped 
her out.” 

“Yes, that would make Sarah cross,” agreed 
Rosemary. “Where is she now?” 

“I don’t know,” said Shirley and her tone in¬ 
dicated that she didn’t particularly care. “Come 
on and let’s go wading, Rosemary.” 

“Rosemary is going to make the beds for 
Mother,” interposed Mrs. Willis. “Winnie is 




AN EVENTFUL DAY 


99 


so busy this morning she hasn’t time. Don’t you 
want to pick up the papers on the porch, Shir¬ 
ley, and put the cushions straight in the swing 
and bring in some fresh flowers for the glass 
jar? Then, when you have it all in order. I’ll 
come out there and sit and make a new dress for 
your doll.” 

“Oh, yes, that will be nice!” beamed Shirley, 
trotting off busily. 

In all that hive of industry, represented by 
the farm, Sarah was the one idle figure. She 
sat on the fence commanding a view of the pig 
pen—not the pleasantest prospect Rainbow Hill 
afforded, it must be confessed—and dangled her 
feet moodily. She was still resentful at the sum¬ 
mary ejection of the barn cat from the clothes 
basket and, in addition, had been worsted in an 
argument with Warren whose turn it was to 
cultivate the corn. Sarah had wished to ride on 
the cultivator, preferably in the driver’s seat or, 
failing that, on the horse’s back. Warren had 
endeavored to dissuade her as tactfully as pos¬ 
sible but finding that tact made small impres¬ 
sion on Sarah, had been obliged to come out with 
a flat refusal. 

“What a funny chicken!” said Sarah aloud, 
turning her attention from the grunting pigs be- 





100 


RAINBOW HILL 


fore her to a solitary chicken behind her, a feat 
which nearly cost her her balance. 

“I do b’lieve it’s sick!” she declared, jumping 
down and walking over to the limp-looking fowl 
which stared at her coldly from a glassy eye. 

Sarah, in the few weeks she had spent on the 
farm, had really learned a good deal about the 
care of the stock. To her natural love for ani¬ 
mals and aptitude for handling them, she had 
added a store of knowledge gleaned by asking 
questions of the boys and Mr. Hildreth and 
observing them as they went about the barns. 
She had faithfully tagged Mrs. Hildreth, who 
took care of the poultry too, and had often seen 
her pick up a chicken and examine it. 

So now she picked up the apathetic bird and 
felt of his crop with exploring little brown 
fingers. 

“You’re hungry, I’ll bet,” she informed him. 

“You probably didn’t feel well this morning 
and the other hens knocked you away from the 
corn. Don’t you care, I’ll get you some break¬ 
fast, all for yourself.” 

Sarah knew where the grain bins were in the 
barn and she went in and opened them all. 
Using her dress as an apron she selected a hand¬ 
ful of wheat, another of cracked corn, some 



AN EVENTFUL DAY 


101 


buckwheat, a generous scoop of “middlings” and 
a double handful of the meat scraps bought es¬ 
pecially for the ducks. Then out she dashed and 
spread the feast before the hen who really did 
brighten up and eat a good deal of the grain. 
No one hen could have eaten it all—and sur¬ 
vived—and of course the other chickens spied 
the feast in time, but not before the invalid had 
been revived somewhat. 

“Now I’ll put you in a coop till you feel bet¬ 
ter,” said Sarah, “so nothing can pick on you.” 

She stuffed her patient into one of the feed¬ 
ing coops in the poultry yard, gave her a pan of 
water and then, feeling more cheerful herself, 
decided to go wading. 

She glanced toward the house, reflected that 
if she went back to get Shirley her mother might 
object to the wading plan or, worse yet, Winnie 
set her at some useful task, and made up her 
mind to amuse herself alone. 

“Going wading?” called Warren cheerfully, 
as she skirted the cornfield where he sat on the 
swaying cultivator pulled by the plodding Solo¬ 
mon, both horse and boy protected from the 
blazing sun by straw hats. 

Sarah refused to reply. She had no intention 




102 


RAINBOW HILL 


of resuming friendly intercourse so soon after 
the painful episode of the morning. 

“He needn’t think he can boss me,” she 
scolded, sitting down by the brook to take off her 
shoes and stockings. “Ow, the water’s cold!” 

Like a great many older people, Sarah pre¬ 
ferred to think a long time before she committed 
herself to an icy flood. She tucked her feet 
under her comfortably and gave herself up to 
thought. 

In the grass beside her a hundred busy little 
ants ran to and fro and Sarah’s speculations led 
her to wonder whether they had ever made a trip 
by water. 

“I’ll build them a little boat,” she planned, 
“and give them a little ride.” 

Actuated by the kindest of motives, she fash¬ 
ioned a rude sort of ferry boat from a leaf and 
then spent twenty minutes catching passengers 
for it. In her energy and haste she squashed 
several of the little creatures and alas, when she 
finally sent a dizzy half dozen on their voyage the 
leaf capsized and the passengers were drowned. 
This effectually discouraged Sarah and she 
turned again to the prospect of wading. 

The water was so cold that the soft green 
grass seemed more inviting and Sarah began to 



AN EVENTFUL BAY 


103 


walk along the brook’s edge, wincing a little 
now and then as her foot struck a sharp stone. 
Then, without warning, she stepped into a hole 
and sharp, darting tongues of fire attacked her 
ankles. 

“Yellow jackets! Wasps! Bees!” shrieked 
the unfortunate child, flinging her shoes into the 
brook and her stockings clear on the other side 
as she started to run. “Get away—leave me 
alone!” 

She had stepped into a nest of yellow jackets 
and stirred up great wrath. Her feet and ankles 
suffered the most stings, though one furious in¬ 
sect lighted on her elbow and another on her 
wrist while a third punctured her cheek. Run¬ 
ning madly and crying with pain, Sarah finally 
succeeded in distancing the yellow jackets, but 
her shoes and stockings, as far as she was con¬ 
cerned, were a total loss. Nothing, she was posi¬ 
tive, would induce her to go back and get them. 

She limped sadly to the orchard and climbed 
her favorite wide-branching apple tree, to take 
count of her injuries. Angry, white puffy swell¬ 
ings showed where each sting had exacted toll. 

“There must be a million,” said the suffering 
Sarah. 

But it was cold comfort, counting the wounds, 




104 


RAINBOW HILL 


and she longed for sympathy. Glancing through 
her leafy screen she saw Richard skirting the 
orchard fence on his way to the barn. She 
turned to scramble down and in the descent 
struck her elbow on the bark, the poor elbow al¬ 
ready tender from a vicious sting. Sarah cried 
out in pain, let go hastily and tumbled to the 
ground. 

Richard had heard her cry and he came run¬ 
ning to pick her up. 

“Good grief, you are a wreck!” he ejaculated 
when he saw her. “There, there, Sarah! You 
haven’t broken any bones—I’ll brush you off 
and you’ll be as good as new. Don’t cry like 
that—please don’t!” 



CHAPTER XI 


ALL SEEENE AGAIN 

“y THINK,” said Richard, judiciously, “I’ll 

I carry you up to the barn and wash you 
off; your mother might think you were 
permanently disfigured if she saw you now.” 

Sarah was truly a forlorn-looking object, but 
he tucked her under his arm and set off for the 
barn, trying in vain to soothe her as they went. 
Sarah wept continuously and only stopped when 
she was put down on the barn floor. She stopped 
then because someone was making more noise 
than she could possibly make. 

“I don’t want to hear another word,” Mr. 
Hildreth was saying in a cold, loud voice. “Not 
another word. You left those grain bins open 
and the least you can do is to admit it like a 
man.” 

“I did not leave them open!” Warren’s voice 
was as passionate and shaken as the other’s was 
cold. “I tell you I did not! I haven’t been in 
the barn this morning, except once to get the oil 
can. I wasn’t near the bins.” 

105 


106 


RAINBOW HILL 


Richard was pumping water into a basin and 
Sarah was glad he was not looking at her. She 
had forgotten to put the lids of the grain bins 
down! The door of the small washroom was 
jerked violently open and Warren strode in. 
Mr. Hildreth had evidently terminated the argu¬ 
ment by leaving the barn. 

“Hello, you look about as amiable as a thun¬ 
der storm,” Richard greeted his chum. “Got a 
clean handkerchief handy?” 

Warren grimly extended a clean square. 

“What’s the matter with Sarah?” he asked 
curiously. 

“Oh, she’s had a hard morning—thought I’d 
wash off some of the worst of it before she 
scared everyone at the house into fits,” ex¬ 
plained Richard, beginning gently on Sarah’s 
face, with the clean handkerchief dipped in 
water. “What was the row?” 

Warren’s face darkened. He bit his lip. 

“Mr. Hildreth found the whole flock of hens 
having a Thanksgiving dinner out of the grain 
bins this morning,” he said in a tone which he 
strived to make light and even. “He insists I 
left the lids up and I am just as sure I didn’t. 
In a moment of madness I might leave one up, 





ALL SERENE AGAIN 


107 


but I never had all the bins open at the same 
time since I’ve worked here/’ 

“If Mr. Hildreth had a grain of sense,” pro¬ 
nounced Richard, looking dubiously at Sarah 
who still presented a sad appearance notwith¬ 
standing his ministrations, “he’d know better 
than to accuse you. Of course some of these 
children have been fooling around the bins.” 

Sarah jumped at this uncanny penetration. 
She wanted nothing in the world so much as to 
get out of that washroom, away from Richard’s 
straightforward gaze. 

She edged carefully toward the door—but 
there was to be no escape. 

“Sarah, were you in the barn this morning?” 
asked Richard. 

Her answer was a look that Doctor Hugh 
would have been able to instantly interpret—it 
meant that Sarah had retreated into one of her 
obstinate, sulky silences and had made up her 
mind not to be forced into speech. 

Richard turned and shot the bolt across the 
door. 

“Were you in the barn this morning?” he re¬ 
peated. “Answer me—but I know you were; 
and you must have left the grain bins open.” 

Sarah remained silent. Richard took a step 




108 


RAINBOW HILL 


toward the obdurate little figure, but Warren’s 
voice halted him. 

“Quit it, Rich,” he said quietly. “Open that 
door. Run along, Sarah, and next time you 
climb an apple tree, have a pillow on the ground 
ready to catch you.” 

Sarah stepped over the sill, turned around, 
seemed about to speak and then went silently 
out of the barn. She heard Richard say some¬ 
thing and Warren’s reply: 

“Oh, what difference does it make, if she 
did?” 

Mrs. Willis knew what to do for the yellow 
jacket stings and she knew how to cure scratched 
hands and arms and soothe aching littlejieads. 
She knew, too, the signs of a hurt heart—when 
it was Sarah’s. Shirley thought her sister was 
merely “cranky” when she pushed her out of 
the swing and Rosemary decided to let Sarah 
severely alone when that small girl hurled her 
music from the piano rack and began a violent 
performance of “chop sticks.” But Mrs. Willis 
waited patiently. 

It can not be denied that Sarah made the re¬ 
mainder of the day a veritable “blue Monday” 
for her family. Secure in the privileges ac¬ 
corded her as an invalid, she quarreled with 



ALL SERENE AGAIN 


109 


Shirley and Rosemary, drove Winnie to distrac¬ 
tion with repeated requests for cookies and lem¬ 
onade and answered Mrs. Hildreth snappishly 
when that good woman stopped in for a mo¬ 
ment’s chat and generally behaved, as Winnie 
put it “like all possessed.” 

And yet, when Rosemary announced at sup¬ 
per that Richard and Warren were going to 
walk to the “Center” to see a man at the cream¬ 
ery and that they would be back before dark and 
had said the girls might go with them, Sarah’s 
refusal to go immediately convinced her sisters 
that she must be really ill. 

They set off as soon as the meal was over, 
Rosemary and Shirley and the two boys, and 
Sarah curled herself, a disconsolate little heap, 
in the porch swing. And there her mother 
found her and in less than two minutes had the 
whole story, from the pathetic beginning. “The 
hen was awfully sick, Mother,” down to the 
“queer feelings” Sarah had experienced when 
Richard, always so good-natured and kind, had 
turned into an entirely different person. 

“And I’m afraid of Mr. Hildreth,” wailed 
Sarah, the tears flowing again as she ended her 
recital. “He’ll yell at me, if I tell him, the way 
he did at Warren.” 





110 


RAINBOW HILL 


“Why no,” said Mrs. Willis, in the most mat¬ 
ter-of-fact tone. “Why no, he won t, Sarah. 
Certainly not. And you’re not one hit afraid 
of him. He’ll be sitting out on the porch now, 
smoking his pipe and quite ready to listen to 
whatever you have to tell him. You don’t want 
Mother to go with you, do you?” 

“Of course not,” said Sarah, almost as mat- 
ter-of-factly. “I’ll go now, before the boys get 
back, Mother.” 

And away she marched to the bungalow, con¬ 
fidently, if not cheerfully. She had meant to 
ask her mother whether it would be necessary to 
confess that she had been the one who left the 
bms open, but Mrs. Willis had so evidently 
taken for granted that Sarah meant to do this 
at once, that the question had never been asked. 
Well, if Mr. Hildreth wasn’t going to yell at her 
and if she wasn’t afraid of him—and her mother 
had said he wouldn’t and she wasn’t—there was 
no earthly reason why she should not admit that 
she had been careless. 

It all happened exactly as Mrs. Willis had 
said. Mr. Hildreth was sitting on his porch, 
smoking comfortably and resting after a hard 
day. He was surprised to see Sarah, but he did 
not yell at her. Instead he listened silently 





ALL SERENE AGAIN 


111 


while she stammered out that she had been to 
blame for the hens feasting in the bins. She 
told him about the sick hen and she outlined her 
eventful day, culminating in the tumble from 
the apple tree and Richard’s attempt to render 
first aid in the washroom. 

“Well,” Mr. Hildreth spoke for the first time, 
when she had finished. “Well, I’m glad you 
came to me and told me—though that’s the nat¬ 
ural thing to do. Own up when you’re wrong— 
isn’t it?” 

“Is it?” asked Sarah doubtfully. 

“Only square thing to do,” the farmer assured 
her. “I’ll tell Warren before I turn in to-night, 
then we’ll be above board all around. You like 
animals, don’t you?” he added suddenly. 

“When I grow up,” she announced, “I’m not 
going to do a thing but take care of animals. 
I’m going to have a farm, like yours, Mr. Hil¬ 
dreth, and I’m going to have seven automobiles 
with men to drive ’em. They’ll go through all 
the cities and take the poor sick horses and dogs 
and cats and—and birds and things and bring 
’em back to my farm. Then I’ll doctor them up 
and cure them.” 

“So you think you’ll be a doctor, hey?” said 
the farmer lazily. 




112 


RAINBOW HILL 


“An animal doctor,” Sarah affirmed. “I won’t 
take care of sick folks, ’cause they’re cross; Shir¬ 
ley is going to be that kind of a doctor maybe. 
Animals are never cross, no matter how sick 
they are. Did you know that, Mr. Hildreth?” 

“Come to think of it, I do,” Mr. Hildreth ad¬ 
mitted, enjoying the conversation immensely. 
“But where’ll you get money to run this farm, 
Sarah? Don’t you think you ought to raise some 
crops?” 

Sarah pondered. 

“Bich and Warren can do that,” she decided 
easily. “They’ll be through agricultural college 
by then and perhaps they’ll like to run my farm. 
But Warren will have to buy a tractor, because 
I won’t let my horses plow. None of the animals 
are going to work, when I take care of them.” 

Mr. Hildreth glanced at her queerly. 

“You’re just like the rest,” he said grimly. 
“You think of work as something to side-step, 
don’t you? Let me tell you, Sarah, that unless 
you give these animal friends of yours something 
to do and train them to do it regularly, you will 
have to spend all your days dosing them.” 

“You mean they’ll be sick?” asked Sarah, 
worried at once. 

“Of course they’ll be sick,” declared Mr. Hil- 




ALL SERENE AGAIN 


113 


dreth. “Animals and people need work to keep 
them well. Ask your brother.” 

“Then I’ll let my animals work just enough,” 
said Sarah thoughtfully. “Not too much, but 
just enough. And maybe I’ll let Warren plow 
with the horses.” 

“I would, if I were you,” agreed Mr. Hil¬ 
dreth. “You work pretty hard yourself, don’t 
you, Sarah?” 

Sarah stared at him suspiciously. Apparently 
he was serious. 

“Of course,” continued Mr. Hildreth, “you 
call it play. But when I see you flying over 
this farm and trying to be in two places at once 
and cram half a hundred experiences into one 
short day, I think you work as hard as I do. 
Maybe harder. Don’t you ever get tired, 
Sarah?” 

“When I go to bed,” responded that active 
person. “But I’m not tired when I first go,” 
she added hastily. “Mother or Hugh or Winnie 
are always making me go to bed before I’m 
sleepy. I want to study the insects on the lawn, 
but how can I when I have to go to bed?” 

“You’re not the first person who has wanted 
to turn night into day,” said Mr. Hildreth 
calmly. “It’s lucky for some of us that you’re 




114 


RAINBOW HILL 


not successful. If we had to keep an eye on you 
all night, Sarah, as well as during the waking 
hours, think how little else we’d get done.” 

Sarah had a shrewd suspicion that he was 
laughing at her. She turned to go. 

“Wait a minute—wouldn’t you like a pet?” 
said the farmer quickly. 

“Oh, yes!” replied Sarah. 

“I was thinking you might like a baby pig,” 
Mr. Hildreth informed her. “There’s one in the 
last litter that isn’t getting a fair chance. He’s 
a runt and crowded out. If you want to take 
him and bring him up on a bottle, you can have 
him for your own.” 

“I’ll take him,” said Sarah quickly. “I can 
learn how to feed him, can’t I? And he can 
sleep with me—or at least in my room—I knew 
a girl who had a little puppy and he slept in 
her doll’s bed. Thank you ever so much, Mr. 
Hildreth.” 

So it was arranged that Sarah was to have her 
pig in the morning and she and Mr. Hildreth 
parted excellent friends. 

She did not go back to the house but, instead, 
started off down the road over which, she knew, 
Warren and Richard, Rosemary and Shirley, 
must come. She had walked perhaps half a mile, 
when she saw them. 




ALL SERENE AGAIN 


115 


Sarah became unaccountably shy. She walked 
more and more slowly and, reaching Rosemary, 
who was ahead, she found she had nothing to 
say. 

“Hello, dear,” Rosemary greeted her, won¬ 
dering why Sarah had changed her mind and 
come to meet them. “Do you feel better?” 

“Come back and walk with me, Sarah,” said 
Warren pleasantly, for he had determined to 
put Sarah at her ease about the grain bins. 

“A fuss like that is nothing to worry about,” 
he had told Richard, “and I don’t like to see a 
kid unhappy over such trifles.” 

Sarah waited till the other three were a little 
ahead and then she slipped a confiding hand into 
Warren’s. 

“I told Mr. Hildreth,” she whispered, “and 
he wasn’t cross one bit; and I’m going to have a 
baby pig for my own and bring it up on a bot¬ 
tle.” 

Warren’s face was as bright as the one she 
lifted to his. 

“Why Sarah Willis!” he said joyfully. “Why 
Sarah! You went to Mr. Hildreth about those 
silly grain bins? You needn’t have done that— 
I meant to tell you not to worry. But, of course, 
I’m glad you did tell him.” 




116 


RAINBOW HILL 


“What are you talking about?” demanded 
Shirley, looking back. “Did Sarah tell Mr. 
Hildreth something?” 

Richard’s glance rested sharply on Sarah. He 
smiled, grasping what had happened with his 
usual quickness. 

“You’re a brick, Sarah!” he complimented 
her. “A brick—that’s what you are.” 

But Sarah was eager to tell about her pig 
and Warren wished to change the topic so no 
more was said then. Instead Richard addressed 
himself to the three Willis girls collectively. 

“I think you’ve about explored Rainbow 
Hill,” he announced, “at least Sarah has. She’s 
exhausted its possibilities, if I’m a fair judge. 
I think you need some new interests.” 

“Yes,” agreed Shirley with perfect gravity 
and not the slightest idea of his meaning, “yes 
we do, Richard.” 

They all laughed, but Richard was not to be 
side-tracked. 

“There’s the Gay family,” he said. “You 
don’t know them, but some of the children must 
be about your own age.” 

Rosemary thought “Gay” a pretty name and 
said so while Sarah reproved her. “Gay isn’t a 



ALL SERENE AGAIN 


117 


name, silly; it means they always have a good 
time. Doesn’t it, Richard?” 

“Well no, not in this case,” replied Richard, 
“but I’m going over there to-morrow morning 
and, if you like, you may come along and get 
acquainted.” 







CHAPTER XII 


NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 

HE entire household was startled to be 



awakened at three o’clock the next 


morning by the mad ringing of an 


alarm clock. Shirley wept, Mrs. Willis and 
Rosemary were sure it was the telephone and 
Winnie scolded vigorously and, still scolding, 
traced the noise to Sarah’s bed. 

Sure enough, the clock was there and Sarah 
admitted that she had set it. 

“I wanted to be sure and get up early,” she 
explained. “I have to get my pig and go and 
see the Gay family.” 

But she further conceded that she had not 
meant to rise at the witching hour of three a. m. 
Her intention had been to set the alarm for 
half-past five and her mistake was due to the 
fact that she had not set an alarm clock before. 

“And never will again,” commented Winnie, 
bearing the offending clock away with her for 
safe-keeping. “Not if I have anything to say, 
will you ever touch an alarm clock.” 


118 



NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


119 


Breakfast was half an hour later than usual, 
in consequence of this performance, and Sarah 
was in a fever of impatience to reach the pig 
pens. When finally excused from the table, she 
shot through the door and was back before her 
mother and sisters had left the dining-room. 

Loud sounds of altercation in the kitchen pro¬ 
claimed her return. 

“You can’t bring that in here—go away, 
Sarah Willis!” came Winnie’s voice. “Where 
did you get that dirty beast?” 

“He’s mine—he’s a pig,” countered Sarah, 
who always assumed that Winnie was intensely 
ignorant in matters of natural history. “Mr. 
Hildreth gave him to me.” 

There was the noise of a scuffle, the slam of a 
door and then Sarah’s wail: 

“Oh, you’ve hurt him! And he’s sick—you’re 
the most cruel woman I ever knew and 111 tell 
Mother so!” 

Mrs. Willis opened the swinging door into the 
kitchen and Bosemary and Shirley pressed close 
behind her. Sarah stood on the hack porch, a 
young pig in her arms, and Winnie occupied the 
center of the kitchen floor. 

“We don’t keep our pigs in the parlor—not 
in this house,” said Winnie firmly. ‘ Nor yet in 
the kitchen—as long as I’m in it.” 



120 


RAINBOW HILL 


Rosemary thought then, as she had often 
thought before, how easily her mother settled 
differences and with how few words. It took 
scarcely five minutes for Mrs. Willis to examine 
the pig and praise his possibilities to Sarah; to 
suggest a comfortable box in the woodshed as 
his logical home—where he might have fresh air 
in abundance and yet be close to Sarah if he 
needed her attention; and to enlist the sympa¬ 
thies of Winnie—whose bark was always loud 
and whose bite had never materialized yet—to 
the extent that she provided a piece of soft flan¬ 
nel to line the box and warm milk to comfort 
the interior of the little pig. 

His pigship was a runt, as Mr. Hildreth had 
said, and deprived of his fair share of nourish¬ 
ment was bony and far from prepossessing. 
Rosemary had no desire to touch him, but Shir¬ 
ley was fascinated and she and Sarah put him 
to bed in the box and covered him up with all 
the care and devotion they had hitherto showered 
on dolls. As Richard observed, when he came 
to tell them he was starting for the Gay farm, 
even a pig could be killed by kindness. 

“Mother said she’d get me a bottle for him,” 
babbled Sarah as she emerged clean and damp 
from Winnie’s polishing and joined Richard on 





NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


121 


the step. “Hugh is going to take her to Ben¬ 
nington this morning and she’ll buy it then. 
And I can bring him up by hand and teach him 
tricks. His name is—what is a good name for 
him, Richard?” 

“Napoleon Bonaparte,” supplied Richard 
with mischievous promptness. “You can call 
him ‘Bony’ for short, you know.” 

The practicality of this suggestion charmed 
Sarah beyond words, and the pig was immedi¬ 
ately christened. “Bony” he became in that hour 
and “Bony” he femained, with the use of his 
full name on state occasions, long after he was 
as plump as any of his more fortunate brothers 
and sisters. 

“Where do the Gays live?” asked Rosemary, 
when she and Shirley had joined the two spon¬ 
sors and they were all walking over the field that 
led to the back road. 

“Their land joins Rainbow Hill,” returned 
Richard, “and if I had my way, we’d be better 
neighbors. The Gays are hard up and proud 
and the Hildreths are busy and like to keep to 
themselves. I don’t know now whether Louisa 
and Alec will be glad to see me bringing three 
strangers to meet ’em, hut my honest opinion is 
they need someone to say ‘Hello’ and be 
friendly without prying.” 




122 


RAINBOW HILL 


Rosemary looked at him speculatively. 

“Perhaps Mother had better go to see Mrs. 
Gay first,” she suggested, with a little touch of 
her mother’s own generalship. 

“There isn’t any Mrs. Gay,” said Richard 
soberly. “They’re orphans—all six of ’em. 
And Warren and I have it figured out that 
grown people frighten them—Louisa and Alec 
shut up like clams when they meet anyone in 
town. They won’t think you and Sarah and 
Shirley mean to boss their affairs. Maybe they’ll 
be friends with you.” 

The three girls drew closer to Richard as they 
approached a tumbled-down fence. Six year old 
Shirley expressed, in a measure, their feelings 
when she stopped Richard as he attempted to 
lift her over, with the observation that she had 
never seen an orphan. 

“An orphan hasn’t any mother or father, you 
know, Shirley,” said Richard, smiling. “You’ll 
find Kitty Gay a little girl very much like your¬ 
self. Show her how lovely a little girl named 
Shirley Willis can be.” 

“We’ll know eight orphans then, in a minute,” 
declared Sarah, her statistical mind functioning 
even as she helped to replace the fence bars. 
“The Gays are six and you and Warren are 




NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


123 


two; so you did see an orphan before, Shirley.” 

“For mercy’s sake, forget the orphan part of 
it,” begged poor Richard. “Don’t say ‘orphan’ 
once—I didn’t bring you up here to look at the 
Gays. They’re no side show.” 

Rosemary laughed, then sobered instantly as 
a turn in the lane brought them face to face with 
a tow-headed lad, carrying two pails of water. 
He was about the age of Jack Welles, she de¬ 
cided, but infinitely thinner and lacking Jack’s 
solid build. 

“ ’Lo, Dick!” he said cordially. “Want me?” 

Richard introduced the three girls with more 
ease than Rosemary had expected. Alec Gay 
was undeniably shy, but he asked them to come 
to the house and meet his sister, Louisa. Rich¬ 
ard took one pail and Alec the other, and they 
went on. 

“Louisa!” shouted Alec as they came in sight 
of a weather-beaten house set in a fenced en¬ 
closure of rank grass where a cow grazed peace¬ 
fully. 

A girl appeared in the doorway, a tow-headed 
girl with blue eyes like her brother’s, and thin 
shoulders, like his, too. She wore a faded blue 
dress and a black apron and looked clean and 
neat. 




124 


RAINBOW HILL 


This was Louisa Gay and noting that she 
glanced uncertainly into the doorway, after 
Richard had introduced them, Rosemary tact¬ 
fully suggested that they sit on the stoop. 

“We can’t stay long and it is too nice to go 
indoors,” she said sincerely. 

“The house doesn’t look very nice this morn¬ 
ing,” apologized Louisa, “to tell the truth, 
everything is in a mess; hut if we stay out here, 
the children will come hunting for me and 
they’re a mess, too. There isn’t much choice, 
either way.” 

She sat down beside Rosemary who kept fast 
hold of Shirley lest she start an exploring tour 
of her own. 

“Where’s the Kitty girl?” asked Shirley 
frankly. 

As she spoke a stream of children poured out 
of the house—or it seemed like a stream, though 
when they were counted they were but four. 
Each and every one of them had light hair and 
blue eyes like Alec and Louisa, all were tanned 
and freckled and all were shouting madly. The 
youngest was a baby, the oldest a year or so 
older than Sarah. Two were hoys and two 
girls. 

“Jim, Ken, Kitty and June,” said Alec glibly. 






“Rainbow Hill” 


Page 125 
















NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


125 


“For goodness’ sake, do keep still,” he admon¬ 
ished the children. “Can’t you see we have 
company?” 

Richard, who evidently felt at home, had 
gone on into the kitchen with the pail of water 
and came out in time to hear Alec’s remark. 

“We’re not company,” he said quickly. 
“We’re neighbors.” 

Shirley, after staring a few seconds at Kitty, 
began to talk to her as though she were an old 
friend. Sarah went over to look at the cow and 
Jim and Ken followed her. The baby, June, 
climbed into Rosemary’s lap and sat quietly 
there. 

“She never goes to strangers,” marveled 
Louisa, leaning over to straighten out the 
crumpled little skirts. “Look Alec, she likes 
her.” 

Alec was looking and so was Richard. Rose¬ 
mary made a pretty picture there in the sun¬ 
light, her lovely vivid face turned to Louisa, her 
arms about the tousled little figure on her 
knees. 

“It’s so nice to have a girl of my own age to 
talk to,” Louisa said appreciatively. “I never 
have time to go down to town any more and I 
don’t see the girls I used to know.” 




126 


RAINBOW HILL 


“But in the winter?” suggested Rosemary. 
“You go to school, winters, don’t you?” 

Louisa’s lips tightened. 

“I didn’t last winter and I don’t intend to 
this,” she announced with curious defiance. 
“There’s no one to take care of the children ex¬ 
cept Alec and me. We tried taking turns stay¬ 
ing home, hut neither one of us could learn 
much that way so we gave it up.” 

Richard had come over, so he said, to borrow 
a file and presently he declared he must get back 
to work. June was handed back to Louisa, 
Sarah summoned from her lecture on pigs—to 
which the boys were giving rapt attention, and 
Shirley, with difficulty, detached from Kitty and 
a dilapidated rope swing. 

“You’ll come over and see us, won’t you?” 
said Rosemary eagerly. 

“No,” interposed Alec, standing straight and 
tall beside his sister. 

The monosyllable sounded ungracious but 
Rosemary, looking at Alec, saw that he did not 
mean to be discourteous. He looked a little un- 
happy, a little shy, a bit afraid, even. And 
Louisa’s blue eyes were wistful. 

“Then we’ll come see you,” promised Rose¬ 
mary gravely. 




NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


127 


“I’m glad you said that,” approved Richard, 
leading the way down the road. “Alec never 
goes anywhere that he doesn’t have to and 
Louisa is getting to be just like him. First 
thing those kids know, they’ll be queer.” 

“Am I queer?” asked Sarah in sudden alarm. 

“Not yet, but you want to be mighty careful,” 
Richard warned her. “Lots of people get queer, 
thinking too much about pigs, I’ve heard.” 

“I won’t talk about any pig but my darling 
Bony,” declared Sarah. “I won’t get queer 
talking about him.” 



CHAPTER XIII 


THE GAY FAMILY 


l Richard had foreseen, the Willis girls 



formed the habit of wandering over to 


-*• the Gay farm nearly every day. Rose¬ 

mary liked Louisa and the taciturn Alec, and 
the younger children were companionable in 
age and tastes for Sarah and Shirley. 

It was Warren who explained something of 
the conditions under which the Gay children 
worked and lived, one evening when the girls 
were in bed and Winnie was busy setting bread 
in the kitchen. Warren treasured these rare 
half hours on the porch with Mrs. Willis and he 
had once declared to Richard that ten minutes’ 
uninterrupted conversation with “Rosemary’s 
mother” could make him forget the hardest and 
longest day. 

“The way I figure it out,” said Warren, his 
lean, brown face showing earnest lines even in 
the shaded light from the porch lamp, “the way 
I figure it, Mrs. Willis, the Gays will help Rose- 


128 


THE GAY FAMILY 


129 


mary and Sarah and Shirley and they will cer¬ 
tainly help them. Alec is fifteen and Louisa is 
just Rosemary’s age—and yet they have the 
burden of supporting and bringing up four 
younger children.” 

“And my girls have such a happy, sheltered 
life,” struck in Mrs. Willis. “Yes, Warren, I 
can see what you mean; it won’t hurt them to 
learn of the existence of poverty and hard work. 
But what happened to the parents of these chil¬ 
dren?” 

“They died a couple of years ago—within 
three months of each other, I believe,” said War¬ 
ren. “All they left was these few acres—sixty, 
I think Alec told me. There’s a mortgage and 
most of the stock has been sold off—Alec does 
wonders for his age, but he can’t get the work 
done alone. I helped him some last year and 
I’d help him more, but he is too proud to take 
much.” 

“But they can’t go on like this,” Mrs. Willis 
protested. “It is unthinkable—to allow six 
children to struggle alone for a living on a bar¬ 
ren little farm. Doesn’t anyone take an interest 
in them—the Hildreths or any of the people who 
live near and who knew their father and 
mother?” 




130 


RAINBOW HILL 


Warren settled deeper into his comfortable 
chair. 

“If the house burned down, I suppose they’d 
be taken in by some of the neighbors,” he said a 
trifle bitterly. “Or if they all came down with 
the plague, someone might drop in to offer 
advice. But either of these calamities would 
have to happen in winter at that, to attract at¬ 
tention; the farmers of this community can’t be 
disturbed in summer when they’re up to their 
elbows in work.” 

“You don’t mean that, Warren,” the little 
lady opposite him smiled confidently. 

“I mean at least half of it,” asserted Warren 
doggedly. “Of course when Mr. and Mrs. Gay 
died, everyone pitched in and helped the chil¬ 
dren; I suppose they did, though I wasn’t here 
to see. But I do know that now when they need 
advice and practical help, they’re apparently 
forgotten. Their attendance at school last win¬ 
ter was a farce and yet the authorities let an 
investigation slide; Mr. Hildreth promises 
vaguely to look after them’ in the fall—and 
there they are, six fine American children left 
to bring themselves up.” 

“Someone must be responsible,” said Mrs. 
Willis firmly. “I’ll speak to Hugh—he will 
know what to do.” 



THE GAY FAMILY 


181 


Warren shook his head. 

“I wouldn’t—that is not yet,” he declared. 

4 ‘It is rather difficult to explain and—well, I 
suppose I haven’t been quite fair in my state¬ 
ments, either. Alec and Louisa do not invite 
friendship—they are extremely proud and shy 
and so reserved as to be almost repellant to 
strangers. I think every allowance should he 
made, under the circumstances, for them, but 
the neighbors who tried to do for them at first 
were miffed, I suppose, and take the attitude 
that if they want to keep to themselves, they 
may. 

“Alec is close-mouthed, too, and I fancy he 
has resented attempts to publicly discuss their 
financial affairs. There is a mortgage on the 
farm, of course—what would a farm be without 
a mortgage?” Warren digressed for a moment 
but was instantly serious—“and I suppose the 
interest keeps Alec awake nights figuring. 
Both he and Louisa have given up going any¬ 
where—they send one of the children to the Cen¬ 
ter for the few things they have to buy. It’s 
simmered right down to this—they’re avoiding 
everyone and if they don’t look out they 11 be as 
queer as—as the dickens!” 

“Like some of those mountaineers I saw when 




132 


RAINBOW HILL 


Hugh took me over the back road to that little 
settlement at the foot of the hills,” said Mrs. 
Willis. “The women peep out of the windows 
furtively and the children run if they see a 
stranger—all because they have lost the habit 
of meeting folk.” 

“That’s it,” agreed Warren eagerly. “That’s 
what I mean. And I think it is a shame, for 
the Gays are nice kids—clean and honest and 
wholesome. You know I would never have 
taken the girls over there if there was the slight¬ 
est possibility of the Gays setting them a bad 
example in any way. I have a cousin who is a 
teacher and she is always preaching that chil¬ 
dren pick up the bad traits they see in others 
quicker than they do the good ones.” 

“I’m not so sure of that,” smiled Mrs. Willis. 
“But I am glad you are so thoughtful, Warren. 
They are very precious to me—my three daugh¬ 
ters.” 

“If I had three sisters like them—” War¬ 
ren’s voice faltered. 

He began again, hurriedly. 

“What the Gays need,” he said earnestly, “is 
human contacts—I think that’s the phrase I 
want. They need to know normal, happy chil¬ 
dren their own age. It isn’t the poverty that 



THE GAY FAMILY 


133 


will hurt them—Rich and I have been as poor 
as church mice and are still; but we have battled 
our way through school and mixed with fellows 
and met people. In some ways Louisa and 
Alec are ten years beyond their time—they run 
the farm and train and punish those four young¬ 
sters and figure out expenses like a couple of 
old stagers. Give ’em one more year and they’ll 
forget how to laugh and be hopelessly mixed on 
the true values.” 

“I think I know what you are trying to bring 
about,” observed Mrs. Willis sagely. “You 
think they’ll trust the girls and make friends 
with them and, later, an older person will be 
able to gain their confidence. An older head 
will be needed soon, if that farm is the only 
source of income. Well, Warren, I believe you 
are right and it will work out nicely in the end. 
I’m glad to have the girls see something of lives 
that are different from theirs and I know they 
will all three learn a great deal that will be help¬ 
ful to them. I did plan to go over and see the 
Gays but now I’ll wait, for a time at least.” 

“She’s a wonder!” said Warren to himself, 
walking back to the bungalow a few minutes 
later. “She can see just what is in a fellow’s 
mind and sort it out for him. Funny how Rich 




134 


RAINBOW HILL 


and I puzzled over what made those three girls 
so different from any girls we ever knew—they 
do just as many crazy things and Winnie says 
they have tempers and wills of their own, but 
they have something that sets them apart Rich 
said it was ideals and I called it fine standards 
and, in a measure, I suppose we’re both right. 
But just two words will explain everything— 
their mother!” 

It must he confessed that Bony, the pig> 
claimed a large share of Sarah’s time and atten¬ 
tion. She let Rosemary and Shirley go over to 
see the Gays very often without her. There 
were the pig’s meals to be served, his toilet to be 
made and his manners and training carefully 
considered. 

“My conscience, Sarah Willis, you’re not 
going to wash that pig, are you?” demanded 
Winnie the first morning Sarah made known her 
ideas on the question of cleanliness in connection 
with Bony. 

“I certainly am,” announced Sarah with ap¬ 
palling firmness. “Hugh says you can’t be well, 
’less you are clean. I don’t suppose I can wash 
Bony in the bathtub?” 

“Now Sarah, if I didn’t love you, you would 
have driven me crazy years ago,” said Winnie, 




THE GAY FAMILY 


135 


who was a famous general when she minded to 
be. “You know washing a pig in the bathtub 
is out of the question. I wouldn’t wash him in 
the laundry tubs, either; we have to be nice to 
Mrs. Pritchard for if she deserts us like as not 
there’ll be no more clean clothes this summer; 
you can’t pick and choose your washwoman in 
the country.” 

“Where’ll I wash him then?” asked Sarah. 

“Take him out to the barns—there must be 
tubs there,” directed Winnie. “I’ll give you a 
piece of soap and an old towel. Don’t bring the 
towel back, either.” 

“I’ll hang it on a bush to dry,” promised 
Sarah amiably. “But I have to have some hot 
water, Winnie; Bony is delicate and I can’t give 
him a cold bath.” 

“Then he’ll have to wait till to-morrow for 
his bath,” said the wily Winnie. “The tea ket¬ 
tle is empty and I can’t be lighting the stove to 
heat water just now.” 

“Well, I’ll try the cold water,” Sarah decided 
reluctantly, “but if Bony catches cold, you’ll be 
sorry—that’s all.” 

The pig under one arm and the towel and 
soap under the other, Sarah made for the barn 
and reached the big tub where the horses were 
watered, when Warren saw her. 




136 


RAINBOW HILL 


“What are you going to do with that pig, 
Sarah?” he asked suspiciously. 

“Wash him,” said Sarah, beginning to weary 
of being questioned. 

“Not in that horse tub,” declared Warren. 
“I’ve just filled it for the team. That’s a drink¬ 
ing trough, not a bathtub.” 

Brief experience had already taught Sarah, 
as it had Rosemary and Shirley, that while 
Richard might he cajoled or persuaded, Warren 
was firmness itself. If he said that pigs could 
not be washed in the watering tub, that settled 
the matter. 

“The brook is the best place to wash a pig, 
anyway, Sarah,” suggested Warren helpfully. 
“You take this stiff brush and put Bony in the 
middle of the brook and scrub his back and he’ll 
be the happiest little pig you ever saw. But if 
that is a good dress you have on, take my advice 
and stay away from water,” he added. 

“I won’t get wet,” said Sarah indifferently. 
“Well, I guess I’ll have to wash Bony in the 
brook. I never saw such a fussy bunch of peo¬ 
ple.” 

She scrubbed the pig thoroughly, soaking her¬ 
self to the skin in the process, and dried him 
neatly with the towel. Then she took him hack 





THE GAY FAMILY 


137 


to his box, fed him a nursing bottle of warm 
milk—he had readily learned to take the bottle— 
covered him up and hung the soiled wet towel 
on the rose bush by the front door. Leaving the 
scrubbing brush in the porch swing and the jel¬ 
lied remains of the soap on a gingham pillow, 
Sarah retired to put on a dry frock, feeling that 
she had accomplished one task successfully. 

“That pig,” said Winnie, when she came upon 
the soapy trail of his bath, “that pig will drive 
us crazy yet. You mark my words!” 




CHAPTER XIV 


THE GAY FINANCES 

S ARAH continued to bathe her pig every 
day. In fact she omitted no slightest 
detail that could contribute to his health 
and comfort; and the amount of care and affec¬ 
tion she lavished on “that porker,” as Mr. Hil¬ 
dreth referred to Bony, would have amazed any¬ 
one unacquainted with Sarah’s trait of exceed¬ 
ing thoroughness. Whatever she found to do— 
providing it was to her liking—this small girl 
did with all her might. 

But naturally the most interesting of pigs 
could not occupy all her time. Bony was young 
and he craved sleep. It was during his rest 
periods that Sarah would consent to accompany 
her sisters to the Gay farm. Once there, she 
was like the boy who, led protestingly to the 
party, had to he dragged home. 

“Oh, dear, I’m sorry you have to find the 
house in such a mess,” Louisa Gay apologized 
one morning, across the table filled with dirty 
138 


THE GAY FINANCES 


139 


dishes and pots and pans piled high in con¬ 
fusion. “I was helping Alec in the field all day 
yesterday and just let the dishes pile up. This 
morning I meant to wash everything in sight— 
I was too tired to touch a plate last night.” 

“We’ll help,” said Rosemary sympathetically. 

She knew that the four younger Gays were 
forbidden to light a fire in Louisa’s absence— 
she and Alec were most strict about this—and 
that, for this reason, they could not heat water 
and wash the dishes for their sister. 

“We’ll help,” repeated Rosemary cheerfully. 
“I have washed tons of dishes in cooking class; 
and Sarah will dry them for us.” 

“I will, if Kitty will,” qualified Sarah, hastily, 
having no mind to be tied down to domestic 
duties while someone else played. 

“Kitty is in bed,” said Louisa severely. “I 
told her to make the beds yesterday and she 
never touched one. She said she forgot. So 
now she has to stay in bed till dinner time to 
make her remember.” 

“I’m going to get up now, Louisa!” shrilled 
the wrathful voice of Kitty from the upstairs 
hall. 

“You go back to bed and stay there, till I tell 
you you can get up,” directed Louisa. “Unless 




140 


RAINBOW HILL 


you want to be locked in your room and miss 
your dinner.” 

Kitty retreated—they heard the door of her 
room slam—and Louisa went on with her plate 
scraping. 

“There’s the baby!” Louisa started nervously. 
“Kenneth must have stopped rocking her.” 

At that moment Kenneth appeared in the 
kitchen doorway, looking distinctly cross. 

“I don’t see why I always have to rock the 
baby!” he grumbled. “Alec wants me to stake 
Dora down by the brook and when am I going to 
get any time to help him if I have to keep June 
quiet?” 

“Let me rock her,” said Shirley. “I can rock 
just as nice—can’t I, Rosemary?” 

“Well, I think you could,” admitted Rose¬ 
mary, smiling. “You must touch the cradle 
very gently, you know, Shirley—don’t rock 
June as though she were in a boat at sea.” 

She went in to the darkened room off the 
kitchen with Shirley and showed her how to 
sway the old-fashioned cradle with a soothing 
motion. When she came back to Louisa, Ken¬ 
neth had disappeared and Sarah with him. 

“I declare, sometimes I get so discouraged, I 
don’t know what to do,” confided Louisa, filling 




THE GAY FINANCES 


141 


the heavy tea kettle at the sink and lifting it 
to the stove. “We do everything the wrong way 
and yet I don’t see where we can take time to do 
them any better. 

“For instance, there’s June. I know she 
shouldn’t be rocked to sleep—but the one day I 
tried to break her of the habit and make her go 
to sleep quietly by herself, I didn’t get a thing 
done. The other children got into mischief, 
Alec was hurt trying to pitch hay and manage 
the team without help and, after all, June didn’t 
learn a thing. She acted worse the next day, so 
I had to give it up and go back to the cradle 
rocking.” 

“I suppose it is hard because she is used to the 
cradle now,” said Rosemary, busily clearing a 
place on the table for the clean dishes. 

“Yes, that’s the reason,” agreed Louisa. “And 
we spend a lot of time staking Lora around in 
different places—she was in the front yard that 
day you came over with Richard. She was there 
because the front yard has the one decent piece 
of fencing left on the farm. She would give 
more milk if we could let her go free in the 
pasture—but Kenneth has to stake her with a 
staple and rope because the fences are so poor— 
where there are any—that the only way to keep 
her home is to tie her.” 




142 


RAINBOW HILL 


“You’re tired,” said Rosemary quickly. “You 
worked too hard yesterday, Louisa. I wish 
you’d go off somewhere—find a nice, cool place 
—and rest; I’ll do these dishes.” 

Louisa did look tired. More than that, she 
looked discouraged. She had not taken pains 
to brush her hair as carefully as usual and it 
was “slicked back” in the tightest possible knot. 
Her dress was perfectly clean, hut so faded and 
mended that it would have taken a merry- 
hearted girl to have been quite happy in it. 
Louisa was far from merry-hearted. 

“But the potatoes will bring in some money, 
won’t they?” urged Rosemary, who now knew 
a great deal about the Gay finances. 

“They will, if they’re not all sunburned, 
before Alec gets them into the barn,” responded 
Louisa gloomily, pouring hot water over a pan 
of dishes. “Last year the yield was poor, too. 
Ken and Jim try to help, hut neither Alec nor I 
can bear to keep such little boys working in the 
hot sun all day long. It isn’t right.” 

Louisa was not given to complaint and Rose¬ 
mary guessed something of the pressure the 
slender shoulders must be enduring. 

“I wish I had a million dollars!” burst out 
Rosemary, putting her arm about Louisa. I d 
give it all to you!” 




THE GAY FINANCES 


143 


To her distress, Louisa began to cry. She was 
standing near the kitchen table and she just put 
her head down on her arms and “let go” as Rose¬ 
mary later told her brother. Shirley, who had 
ventured to leave the cradle, after several cau¬ 
tious tests to determine the depth of June’s 
slumbers, peered in aghast. Rosemary motioned 
to her to go on and Shirley dashed out into the 
sunshine, glad to escape. 

“You’re so sweet to me!” choked Louisa, rais¬ 
ing her tear-stained face. “And you’re so 
pretty—I never saw a girl as pretty as you are. 
I wish I could look the way you do and have the 
clothes you do!” 

So the faded dress had had something to do 
with it, after all. 

Rosemary had always taken her pretty sum¬ 
mer frocks for granted. Now she looked from 
her own blue and white gingham to Louisa’s old 
dress and remembered the freshly-ironed linens 
and ginghams hanging in her closet. Not many, 
perhaps, but dainty and pretty, every one, and 
neither old-fashioned nor faded. 

“I wish you’d let me give you a couple of 
mine,” said Rosemary impulsively. “We’re 
almost the same size and you would look so nice 
in blue, Louisa. I wouldn’t tell a single soul.” 




144 


RAINBOW HILL 


Louisa dried her eyes and reached for the dish 
mop. 

“I’m ashamed of myself,” she declared 
briskly. “I don’t know what made me cry like 
that—Alec and the boys would think I had lost 
my mind. No, I couldn’t take a dress from you, 
Rosemary—I don’t really need it, anyway. 
Thank you, just the same. We need so many 
things that I vow there is no place to begin to 
replenish; a dress would be a drop in the 
bucket.” 

They both laughed a little at Louisa’s mixed 
metaphor and the laughter cleared away the last 
trace of the tears. As they washed and dried 
the mountains of dishes, Louisa explained that 
what was really troubling her, was the interest. 

“The interest on the mortgage, you know,” 
she said earnestly. “It is due the first of Sep¬ 
tember. Mr. Greenleaf holds the mortgage and 
Alec is desperately afraid he will foreclose.” 

Rosemary’s experience with mortgages dated 
from that minute, but she sensed the importance 
of the interest. 

“Perhaps the potatoes—” she suggested hope¬ 
fully, having great faith in Alec’s main crop. 

“We owe for the seed and the fertilizer,” 
answered Louisa. “And last year s taxes are 




THE GAY FINANCES 


145 


not paid; and if we do manage to scrape to¬ 
gether enough to pay the interest, I don’t see 
what we’re going to live on the rest of the year.” 

Rosemary had to admit that the outlook was 
discouraging. She scoured a paring knife 
thoughtfully and polished it off before she ven¬ 
tured a new suggestion. 

“Why doesn’t Alec go to this Mr. Greenleaf, 
and tell him that he is having a hard time?” 
Rosemary proposed. “Ask him to wait a little 
longer for his money. Hugh waits when people 
can not pay him; I heard Winnie say that he 
never collects a bill, but waits for the money.” 

Louisa looked graver than ever. 

“The one thing we must never do, and you 
must never, never tell,” she said impressively, 
“is to go to Mr. Greenleaf. Just as soon as it 
is known in town that we are having a hard time 
to get along, do you know what will happen? 
They’ll take the farm away from us and send us 
to the poor farm—probably bind Alec and me 
out and separate the family for good and all. 
My father and mother would rather have us 
dead than paupers.” 

“Could anyone take the farm away from you 
and do that?” asked Rosemary, much shocked. 

“Of course—it’s often done,” said Louisa, her 




146 


RAINBOW HILL 


light blue eyes gazing intensely at her friend. 
“They’d take us to the poor farm in a minute, 
if they knew we couldn’t hold the farm.” 

“Perhaps it is pleasant at the poor farm,” 
Rosemary was trying to find the cloud’s silver 
lining. “You might like it there; did you ever 
see it?” 

“No, and I never want to,” retorted Louisa 
with finality. 

Then Rosemary asked what it was to be 
“bound out” and Louisa told her that children 
old enough to work were bound out to families 
who agreed to give them their board and clothes 
and send them to school in return for their ser¬ 
vices. 

“It would mean that until we are eighteen 
we’d never have a cent to call our own,” de¬ 
clared Louisa. “We couldn’t do a thing for the 
younger children and, worst of all, we should be 
separated.” 

It was a very sober Rosemary who helped 
with the remainder of the work that morning. 
She spread dish towels to bleach, she swept the 
porch, made the beds—visiting for a brief mo¬ 
ment with the unrepentant Kitty who clamored 
to be allowed to get up and finally was released 
a half hour ahead of time on her promise to pick 





THE GAY FINANCES 


147 


the “greens” for dinner—and, at Louisa’s re¬ 
quest, showed her how a simple soup was made 
in cooking class at the Eastshore school. But 
she was unusually silent while she did all this. 

Walking home across the fields at noon— 
they steadfastly refused to burden the harassed 
family with three extra mouths to feed—Sarah 
noticed her sister’s abstraction. 

“What’s the matter, Rosemary?” she asked 
curiously and Shirley echoed the question. 

“Oh—I’m thinking,” said Rosemary. 



CHAPTER XV 


THE POOR FARM 

R OSEMARY thought a great deal about 
the Gays in the days that followed. 
Louisa had asked her to promise that 
she would tell no one the precarious state of 
their finances—“no one can help and I won’t be 
discussed like the 'cases’ they bring up at the 
sewing circle,” said Louisa passionately. 

“They’d be 'running up’ clothes for June and 
Kitty,” she said another time, “and fitting us 
out to go to the poor farm looking respectable. 
I’d rather stay here and look any old way.” 

Sarah was extremely observant for her years 
and she surprised Rosemary and Louisa with a 
shrewd comment or two, until the latter deemed 
it expedient to take her into the inner circle of 
confidence. Sarah could be loyal and she could 
be silent. From that day she and Rosemary 
were leagued with Louisa and Alec to circum¬ 
vent the town authorities. 

Not that authority, in any guise, was ever 
148 


THE POOR FARM 


149 


manifested. At least it had not been so far. 
Rosemary, on the beautiful moonlight nights 
when “Old Fiddlestrings” wandered again up 
and down the road, playing the “Serenade” with 
his soul in his fingers, found it hard to believe 
that there could be such ugly things in the world 
as poverty and fear. She was sure that Louisa 
and Alec must be mistaken—or else the money 
would come from somewhere—it must. There 
could not be such music and such moonlight and 
such heavenly scented breezes on an earth that 
was anything but wholly lovely, wholly kind. 

“My dear child, you must go to bed,” Mrs. 
Willis remonstrated on the third night when she 
came in to find Rosemary’s room flooded with 
moonlight and Rosemary herself kneeling at the 
window. “You can hear the music just as well 
in bed and I don’t like to have you lose so much 
sleep.” 

And then she brought a light comfortable 
from the bed and, wrapped in that, knelt with 
Rosemary at the window till the player and his 
violin walked wearily away out of sight. After 
all, what was the loss of a little sleep as com¬ 
pared with such playing? 

“Heard Old Fiddlestrings again last night,” 
said Mr. Hildreth, drawing up before the 




150 


RAINBOW HILL 


kitchen door the next morning while Richard 
carried in the piece of ice they had brought from 
the creamery for Winnie. “I declare it’s a mercy 
we don’t have full moon more than once a 
month; no one would get a fair night’s sleep. 
Does he bother you?” 

“Bother us?” echoed Rosemary in astonish¬ 
ment. “Bother us? Why, it is the loveliest 
playing we have ever heard!” 

Richard judged this an excellent time to ask 
a question. 

“How would you like to go over to the poor 
farm?” he suggested, pulling Shirley back from 
the dusty wheel and taking a firm grip on Sarah 
with the other hand to prevent her from crawl¬ 
ing under the horse—for what reason she alone 
knew. 

“The poor farm?” Rosemary’s mind immedi¬ 
ately leaped to the Gays. 

“Oh, Richard, do let’s go!” she cried, her en¬ 
thusiasm kindling. “I’ve always wanted to see 
the poor farm.” 

“Well, your brother goes there often enough,” 
said Mr. Hildreth drily. “It’s thanks to him 
that the new Board of Freeholders put in decent 
plumbing all through the place.” 





THE POOR FARM 


151 


Richard climbed back into his seat and took 
the reins. 

“Well, be ready in about fifteen minutes,” he 
directed. “It’s thanks to Mr. Hildreth that the 
poor-farm folks are going to get some early 
tomatoes.” 

“I’ve a good mind to cuff you,” said the ex¬ 
asperated Mr. Hildreth who had never been 
known to raise his hand against anyone. (War¬ 
ren had once remarked that when he raised his 
voice he needed no further reinforcements.) 
“It’s a pity when we have the first tomatoes and 
more than we can use, not to send those poor 
creatures a few.” 

The “few” tomatoes proved to be six peach 
baskets full and they made a crimson splash in 
the back of the light spring wagon Warren pres¬ 
ently drove around harnessed to the useful Sol¬ 
omon. 

“Mother says do you want to take us all?” 
cried Shirley, balancing herself on the lowest 
step and eyeing Richard anxiously. “I hope 
you want all of us, Richard, because no one 
wants to stay home.” 

Her mother, coming out in time to hear this 
speech, laughed. 

“Have you room for three, Richard?” she 




152 


RAINBOW HILL 


asked. “The girls have had a great many rides 
lately and I’m sure one or two will stay home 
without grumbling, if necessary.” 

“Room for everybody,” Richard assured her. 
“Don’t you want to go, Mrs. Willis? I’ll tip the 
girls over with the tomatoes and you may have 
the whole front seat, if you’ll come.” 

“Thank you no,” she answered him smiling. 
“Winnie and I have a busy day ahead of us. 
You know the doctor and Jack Welles are com¬ 
ing up next week to stay two weeks and Winnie 
and I want to have as much done ahead as we 
can. Have a good time and bring me home some 
wild flowers if you pass any growing along the 
road.” 

It was a warm morning, but no one minds that 
in July. Besides, as Sarah pointed out, there 
was now and then a breeze. Sarah and Shirley 
were seated in the middle of the single long seat 
with Richard at one end and Rosemary the 
other. 

As usual Sarah and Shirley both wanted to 
drive and, also as usual, Richard settled the 
argument diplomatically by allowing each to 
hold the reins in turn, stipulating fixed distances 
for each, using the trees which could be seen 
ahead as boundary marks. 




THE POOR FARM 


153 


Rosemary was less interested in the driving 
than in their destination. She plied Richard 
with questions about the poor farm. Who lived 
there? How many people? How poor did one 
have to be before he was compelled to live on 
the poor farm? Did one, once sent there, ever 
save enough money to go somewhere else? Were 
there any children and what did they do? 

‘‘Good grief!” ejaculated the harassed Rich¬ 
ard, at last rebelling. “I never lived on a poor 
farm, Rosemary. I don’t know a great deal 
more about it than you do.” 

“Is it a nice place?” persisted Rosemary. 

“Depends on what you call nice,” answered 
Richard. “It is a large farm and the house 
looks comfortable. I’ll tell you one thing—if 
I had to be a county charge, I’d rather be sent 
to a country poor farm than to a city almshouse; 
in the country you at least have something green 
to look at.” 

“Would you like to live at this poor farm?” 
said Rosemary. 

Louisa and Alec, Kitty, Ken, Jim and 
June—they were in her mind. She would, per¬ 
haps, have some comforting news to take them 
about the poor farm. She was totally unpre¬ 
pared for the violence of Richard’s reply. 




154 


RAINBOW HILL 


“Like to live at the poor farm?” thundered 
he. “Not if it was the most magnificent place on 
earth! Do you think for one moment that I’d 
have charity handed out to me? I’d rather wash 
dishes for a living—what do you take me for, 
anyway?” 

Three pairs of astonished eyes stared at him. 
Then Rosemary laughed and, after a moment, 
Richard laughed with her. 

“Guess I got too eloquent,” he admitted a 
little shamefacedly. “But honestly, Rosemary, 
I pity those poor souls who have to live at the 
poor farm, more than I pity any other people 
of whom I’ve ever heard. There is nothing 
worse, to my mind, than to be deprived of your 
independence and ability to work.” 

“How do you come to live in the poor house?” 
inquired Rosemary. “Sit still, Sarah; no, it 
isn’t your turn to drive yet.” 

“Oh, sometimes you’re old and haven’t saved 
any money,” said Richard absently. “Some¬ 
times you’re old and sick and have to stop earn¬ 
ing. Lots of people lose those who would have 
supported them—say their children. And now 
and then parents die and leave a family of kids 
who must be brought up as wards of charity.” 

Rosemary hardly noticed when he took the 





THE POOR FARM 


155 


reins from Shirley and turned Solomon into a 
beautiful tree-lined road in perfect condition. 
She was thinking that “wards of charity” did 
not sound half as happy as when one said “the 
Gay children.” 

“Here we are!” announced Richard, stopping 
before a handsome red brick building with a 
great white front porch and a fine stretch of 
lawn before it. “How do you do, Mrs. Carson? 
Mr. Hildreth thought you might like some early 
tomatoes for supper.” 

A stout gray-haired woman had come out 
from the beautifully paneled door and Richard 
performed the introductions. Mrs. Carson was 
voluble in her thanks and suggested that the 
“young ladies” might like to go through the 
buildings. 

“If you’ll come, too,” whispered Rosemary to 
Richard, pressing closer to him. 

Mrs. Carson was a rather handsome woman 
and there was efficiency and competency in every 
crisp fold of her immaculate gingham dress and 
every neat coil of her iron-gray hair. No doubt 
the Board of Freeholders was to be congratu¬ 
lated on its choice of a matron for the poor farm 
—but it was awe she inspired in the minds of 
the three girls before her. Not for worlds 




156 


RAINBOW HILL 


would they have left the safe companionship of 
sunny, kind-hearted Richard and gone on a 
tour alone with this formidable personage. 

“Where are the people who live here?” whis¬ 
pered Sarah, when they had been led through 
spotless corridors, glistening with varnish and 
covered with bright linoleum, into orderly rooms 
stiffly furnished and showing no signs of use and 
out again on to the porch tiled in red and sup¬ 
ported with white columns. 

It was a question Rosemary had been debat¬ 
ing, too. 

“Oh, they’re out back—there’s a porch there 
they can use,” said Mrs. Carson carelessly. 
“Some of ’em spend the time in their dormito¬ 
ries—j us t puttering around. The old ones are so 
messy I can’t have them out here or it would 
never be clean; and the young ones work in the 
kitchen, mornings. Now if you’ll come upstairs, 
I’ll show you the bathrooms your brother had in¬ 
stalled for us.” 

Richard had explained that they were Doctor 
Hugh’s sisters and Mrs. Carson was determined 
to show them every courtesy. They saw the 
large kitchen at last, with three young girls, in 
blue dresses made exactly alike, scraping car¬ 
rots, and four old women peeling potatoes, and 




THE POOR FARM 


157 


then went out to the back lawn where half a 
dozen old people dozed in the glare of the hot 

sun. 

“You needn’t bother to speak to them,” said 
Mrs. Carson. “Most of them are deaf. 

But Rosemary, catching several indignant 
glances darted at the speaker, doubted this. 

“I hope you’ll come over again,” Mrs. Carson 
said, walking with them to the wagon after they 
had, as she expressed it, “seen everything. 

“Tell Mr. Hildreth he’ll be a popular man to¬ 
night when we have those tomatoes for supper, 
she added. "The old folks would rather have 
something they like to eat than any other kind 
of gift; and our tomatoes are late this year.’ 

Yes, she meant to he kind—one could see that, 
thought Rosemary, mechanically holding on to 
Shirley as Solomon speeded up in his haste to 
reach the home barn. 

She was very silent during the return drive 
and busied with her own thoughts. Richard s 
quizzical announcement, “This car doesn’t go 
any further—end of the line, lady,” woke her 
from her dreaming to find that they were home. 

As she lightly jumped to the ground, she put 
the gist of her meditations into words: 




158 


RAINBOW HILL 


“No,” said Rosemary with conviction. “No, 
I wouldn’t want to live at the poor farm!” 

Sarah remained untroubled by any idea of liv¬ 
ing at the poor farm, but at the supper table 
that night she had an individual announcement 
to make. 

“All those people weren’t deaf,” she said 
placidly. 

“How do you know?” Rosemary asked in 
astonishment. 

“I found out,” Sarah answered, buttering her 
mashed potato lavishly. 

“But how?” insisted Rosemary, not without 
anxiety. One never knew what Sarah would do 
next. 

That small girl grinned impishly. 

“I asked one old lady,” she replied. “She said 
she wasn’t. And that’s how I know.” 




CHAPTER XVI 


sarah’s surprise 

W INNIE folded up a pair of stockings 
and dropped them into the capacious 
bag which hung on the arm of her 

chair. 

“It beats me,” she said conversationally, 
“where Sarah runs to every afternoon. It’s been 
going on now for three weeks and she shuts up 
like a clam when I ask her any questions.” 

Winnie and Mrs. Willis were seated in the 
cool, shaded living-room with their mending. It 
was an intensely warm afternoon and several 
degrees cooler inside the house than on the porch. 
Winnie insisted on helping with the darning 
she would have felt hurt had she been denied the 
task of mating and sorting and mending the 
stockings and socks for the family each week— 
and she took pride in assisting Mrs. Willis to 
keep Doctor Hugh’s belongings in perfect order. 

“Mother!” Rosemary hurried in, her hair a 
tangle of waves and ringlets dampened from 
159 


160 


RAINBOW HILL 


heat and perspiration, her cheeks like scarlet 
poppies and her eyes glowing with enthusiasm. 
“Mother, I’ve thought of something!” 

“Rosemary leads an exciting life,” Jack 
Welles had once declared in Mrs. Willis’ 
hearing. “She can get all worked up about any¬ 
thing she happens to be thinking about.” 

Rosemary’s mother remembered this speech 
now, smiling a little at the recollection. 

“Richard and Warren are down in the tomato 
field, working their heads off in this broiling 
sun,” said Rosemary more picturesquely than 
accurately. “And Mother, couldn’t I make 
lemonade and take it down to them?” 

“We have lemons,” put in Winnie. 

Mrs. Willis nodded approval. 

“Make plenty, dear,” she said cordially. 
“Don’t put in too much sugar, for the boys don’t 
like it so sweet; but why not wait an hour until 
it is cooler?” 

“Oh, Mother, let me do it now—they’ll like it 
when they’re working hard. Where’s Shirley? 
She could carry the cups,” and Rosemary paused 
in her flight kitchenwards. 

“Shirley is asleep—don’t wake her,” cautioned 
the mother. “Ask Sarah to help you, dear; she 
is out in the barn. And do keep out of the sun 
as much as you can, dear.” 




SARAH’S SURPRISE 


161 


“Yes’m,” promised Rosemary obediently, dis¬ 
appearing. 

“I’ll go crack the ice,” said Winnie, rising. 
“There’s no use in making the kitchen look like 
Niagara Falls, if a little forethought can pre¬ 
vent it.” 

Rosemary was a quick worker and a neat one, 
when she didn’t have to chop ice, and she soon 
had a shiny white enamel pail half filled with 
delicious cold lemonade. She poured out two 
generous glasses for her mother and Winnie and 
carried them in with her compliments and then 
set off expeditiously, carrying pail, dipper and 
three cups, a feat that required her closest atten¬ 
tion. 

“Sarah!” she called when she reached the barn. 

“What?” called back Sarah, not very gra¬ 
ciously. 

“Please come help me take some lemonade to 
the boys?” 

Sarah put her head out of the barn door and 
eyed the pail thirstily. 

“Let me have some?” she begged. 

“If you’ll help me carry these things,” said 
Rosemary. “I brought three cups and there’s 
enough lemonade for everyone.” 

“Well—all right, I’ll help you,” decided 
Sarah, “but I’m thirsty now.” 




162 


RAINBOW HILL 


“The ice will melt if you’re going to talk all 
day,” said Rosemary, the blazing sun making 
her more impatient than usual. “Come help me 
first and drink your lemonade after we get down 
to the tomato field.” 

Sarah darted back into the barn and reap¬ 
peared in a moment with Bony, the pig, under 
her arm. 

“Sarah Willis! You can’t carry that filthy 
pig and help me lug this pail, too—put him 
down,” scolded Rosemary. 

“Bony isn’t filthy—he’s had a bath this morn¬ 
ing!” flared Sarah. “He’s just as clean as any 
person, so there. And I want to show Richard 
and Warren what he can do.” 

“You know what Hugh would say if he saw 
you fussing with a pig and then coming around 
food without washing your hands,” Rosemary re¬ 
minded her. “If there is one thing Hugh won’t 
stand, it’s to have you handle pets and then come 
to the table without scrubbing your hands. You 
know that, Sarah.” 

“I’m not coming to any table,” insisted Sarah. 
“Besides Bony is clean, I tell you. If I can’t 
bring him I won’t come at all.” 

The walk down to the tomato field was long 
and hot, and Rosemary could not hurry unless 




SARAH’S SURPRISE 


163 


she had someone to share the weight of the pail 
which would, she knew, grow heavier at each 
step. She capitulated. 

“But keep Bony on the other side of you,” 
she commanded Sarah. “I don’t see why he 
can’t walk; do you carry him everywhere he 
goes?” 

Sarah tucked the pig under one arm and gave 
the other hand to the handle of the pail. 

“Bony can walk, but I am saving his 
strength,” she remarked with a dignity worthy 
of Winnie. “You wait till you see what a smart 
pig he is, Rosemary; no one appreciates him ex¬ 
cept me.” 

Warren and Richard, bending over the long 
rows of tomatoes, straightened up in surprise 
as Rosemary’s clear call came down to them. 

“Stay up by the fence—you’ll get your dress 
stained!” shouted Warren. “We’ll come over.” 

“Ye gods, lemonade!” ejaculated Richard 
when he was near enough to hear the inviting 
tinkle of ice. 

“And a pig!” grinned Warren. “Isn’t Bony 
too heavy to cart around on a day like this, 
Sarah?” 

Sarah shook her head in negation, but re¬ 
mained silent. 




164 


RAINBOW HILL 


“You must be baked!” Rosemary looked with 
sympathy at the two flushed faces. 

Both boys looked warm and tired, but they 
averred stoutly that no one minded the heat 
“after they were used to it.” They declared that 
nothing had ever tasted as good as the lemonade. 

“What made you think of bringing us it?” 
asked Warren, sitting down on an overturned 
crate after his second cup and mopping his face 
with his handkerchief. 

“Oh, last winter Jack Welles and the high 
school boys were shoveling snow, we took them 
hot coffee and doughnuts,” said Rosemary care¬ 
lessly. “I suppose I must have remembered how 
much they liked something warm to drink—and 
you like something cold just as much, don’t 
you?” 

“We sure do,” agreed Richard warmly. “This 
Jack Welles is coming up next week, isn’t he? 
Mr. Hildreth is counting on him for two weeks.” 

Rosemary moved the pail beyond the reach of 
Sarah who seemed to have developed an exces¬ 
sive thirst. 

“Jack and Hugh are both coming next Sun¬ 
day,” she answered. “You’ll like Jack, Warren, 
and so will you, Richard. He lives next door to 
us, you know.” 




SARAH’S SURPRISE 


165 


“Well, I only hope he’s used to hard work,” 
said Richard. “How old is he, Rosemary? Al¬ 
most sixteen? I don’t suppose he has ever 
picked tomatoes from sunup to sundown, but 
the cannery opens next week and we’ll be pick¬ 
ing steadily until it closes. Mr. Hildreth is ship¬ 
ping some crates to-day, but the real picking 
starts when the cannery opens. We’re counting 
on Jack to make a third hand.” 

“He’ll want to go fishing,” declared Sarah. 
“Jack doesn’t care how much he hurts the poor 
fish, jabbing hooks into them.” 

Sarah and Jack had had more than one violent 
argument over this question. 

“It isn’t cruel to go fishing,” said Rosemary 
impatiently, thinking how tired Warren looked. 

“I haven’t been this year,” announced Rich¬ 
ard, “though they say there are several good 
streams near here. Sundays I seem to lack am¬ 
bition and during the week, of course, there 
isn’t time.” 

Sarah edged a little nearer the pail. 

“You wouldn’t catch fish would you, War¬ 
ren?” she asked coaxingly. 

Warren looked at her and grinned. 

“Not only would I catch them, he told her, 
“ but I’d eat them; if we are to have fish to eat, 




166 


RAINBOW HILL 


Sarah, someone must catch them for us. The 
same way with roast chickdn for Sunday dinner 
and roast pork, you know; they don’t grow on 
bushes.” 

Sarah’s eyes turned to Bony, now lying com¬ 
fortably sprawled across her lap. She was sit¬ 
ting on the ground and Rosemary beside her. 

“I never would eat Bony!” she said in a 
horror-stricken tone. 

“No, of course not,” Richard put in quickly, 
“but you’d eat a pig you were not acquainted 
with, wouldn’t you?” 

Sarah was most uncomfortable. She liked 
roast pork and in winter was fond of little sau¬ 
sages. And now here was Richard telling her 
that pigs—like Bony—had to be killed before 
one could have roast pork to eat. 

“Never mind, Sarah,” said Rosemary, taking 
pity on her sister. “You don’t have to think 
about what you eat—just don’t try to make 
everyone see your way and don’t argue so much 
and eat what Winnie gives you and you’ll have 
nothing to worry about.” 

Warren laughed and held out his cup as Rose¬ 
mary lifted the dipper invitingly. 

“In other words, Sarah,” he counseled, “don’t 
be so valiant a reformer.” 




SARAH'S SURPRISE 


167 


“What’s a reformer?” demanded Sarah, eye¬ 
ing the pail anxiously. 

“You’re one when you try to stop your friends 
from going fishing,” Warren informed her. 
“That’s the whole trouble with reform—no one 
is willing to improve himself and let his neighbor 
alone; for all you know, Sarah, you drive Jack 
Welles fishing in self-defense. Perhaps, if you 
let him alone, he wouldn’t go at all.” 

Sarah stared, hut Rosemary nodded. 

“I don’t know about Jack,” said Rosemary, 
“but I do know that as soon as someone says it 
isn’t right to do such and such a thing, I always 
want to do it. And it may be something I never 
thought of before.” 

“Like coasting down hill backward,” con¬ 
tributed Sarah. 

Rosemary dimpled and Warren, who had been 
uneasily thinking they ought to go back to the 
vines, resolved to wait a few minutes longer. 

“Did you coast backward?” asked Richard 
with interest. “What happened?” 

“Oh, I ran into another sled and cut my wrist 
and nearly broke the legs of the two boys on the 
other sled,” Rosemary recited. “The trouble 
was I never would have thought of it, if it hadn’t 




168 


RAINBOW HILL 


been for Miss Johnson. She’s a woman who 
lives in Eastshore and she’s forever scolding 
about girls—the way they ‘carry on/ she calls it. 
I happened to hear her say that no nice, well- 
brought up girl would make herself conspicuous 
on a coasting hill.” 

“So you thought up the most conspicuous way 
of getting down the hill and did it?” suggested 
Richard. 

“Well, it turned out more conspicuous than I 
intended,” Rosemary acknowledged. “I never 
intended to tangle up three or four sleds and 
have the news get around that there had been an 
accident on the hill. Mother was so frightened 
when she heard of it—remember, Sarah?” 

Sarah remembered. But she was more inter¬ 
ested in the lemonade. 

“There’s some left, Rosemary,” she tactfully 
declared. 

“You’ve had enough,” said Rosemary. 

Richard rose to his feet at a significant glance 
from Warren. It was pleasant to rest a few 
moments, but the driving force of waiting work 
had not relaxed, merely slowed down. 

“I wish I could help you,” said Rosemary, 
simply and sincerely. 





SARAH’S SURPRISE 


169 


“What do you call it you’ve just been doing?” 
answered Warren. “Picking tomatoes isn’t so 
hard, but it is monotonous; giving us a little 
break in the day is something that counts big, 
Rosemary.” 

“Well, anyway, Jack will be here to-morrow 
to help you,” said Rosemary. “Then perhaps 
you won’t have to work so hard—many hands 
make light work, Winnie says.” 

“Now what,” said Richard thoughtfully, 
“should you say was troubling the small Sarah 
at this moment?” 

Sarah, cut off from the supply of lemonade, 
had turned her back on the others and was bus¬ 
ily disgorging an assortment of articles from her 
blouse. When she whirled around upon the as¬ 
tonished group it was apparent that she had 
secreted upon her small person a pair of baby 
shoes, a doll’s dress and a small parasol. In 
these her pig, Bony, was now arrayed. 

“You want to look at my pig!” she announced 
in clarion tones. “He can do tricks!” 

“Tricks!” echoed Richard, while Rosemary 
rapidly identified the dress as belonging to Shir¬ 
ley’s largest doll, ditto the parasol, and the shoes 
as a pair of Sarah’s own carefully treasured for 
years by Winnie. 




170 


RAINBOW HILL 


“What kind of tricks ?” demanded Warren. 

“You wait and see—” Sarah was so excited 
her voice trembled. “I taught him lots of things. 
I’ve been teaching him every afternoon in the 
barn—he is a naturally bright pig.” 

Her audience was inclined to share her opin¬ 
ion, after watching Bony perform. The pig 
walked up and down before them in the absurd 
costume, twirling the parasol and bowing to each 
in turn as he passed. 

He danced, very mincingly, to a tune Sarah 
played for him on the harmonica—Rosemary 
wondered how many other treasures Sarah’s 
blouse could hold—and though Richard said that 
no pig, no matter how highly educated, could 
hope to identify that tune, it was admitted that 
Bony was a graceful dancer. 

“He can wear spectacles and read a book, 
too,” declared Sarah proudly, “but I couldn’t 
bring them!” 

Like all managers of celebrities she had begun 
to experience the tyranny of the “props.” 

“Well, you must have had a heap of patience,” 
commented Warren admiringly. “Can he do 
anything else, Sarah?” 

“Jump through a hoop,” enumerated Sarah, 
“push a doll carriage and walk around carrying 




SARAH’S SURPRISE 


171 


a doll like a baby—I broke two of Shirley’s china 
dolls, teaching him that trick, but she doesn’t 
know it yet. And, oh, yes, he can sweep—with 
a toy broom—and play a toy piano.” 

“So that’s where all Shirley’s toys have gone 
to!” Rosemary tried to speak severely, but she 
ended by laughing. “Shirley has been missing 
her playthings, one after the other,” Rosemary 
explained to the boys. “And we thought she 
took them outdoors to play with and forgot 
where she left them.” 

“After supper to-night,” said Sarah, calmly 
ignoring this disclosure, “I’ll give an exhibition 
in the barn.” 




CHAPTER XVII 


WILLING AND OBLIGING 

S ARAH was as good as her word. She not 
only assembled the entire Rainbow Hill 
family in the barn that evening and put 
Bony through his paces, but she continued to 
give “exhibitions” whenever and wherever she 
could assemble an audience of one or more. 
Eventually she took Bony over to the Gay farm 
and delighted the children there who thought he 
was absolutely the most clever pig they had ever 
seen and Sarah the most wonderful trainer. 

The fame of Bony spread abroad and grad¬ 
ually Sarah’s family grew accustomed to having 
a horse and wagon drive in, usually with a couple 
of empty milk cans rattling around in the back 
showing that the driver was on his way home 
from the daily trip to the creamery; and to hear¬ 
ing a knock at the door, followed by a voice ask¬ 
ing, “Is the little girl in—the one with the pig?” 

Answered in the affirmative, the inevitable re¬ 
quest would be: “Do you think she would mind 
172 


WILLING AND OBLIGING 


173 


letting me see him do tricks? They tell me, 
down to the creamery” (or at the store or the 
postoffice) “that he is sure a smart pig.” 

These requests pleased Sarah immensely. She, 
would sally forth importantly and rout Bony 
out of his comfortable box, present him as one 
would introduce a famous artist and put him 
through his program. The audience never 
failed to be pleased and grateful and to be gen¬ 
erous with praises. Warren declared that there 
was small danger of Bony ever forgetting his 
accomplishments for hardly a day passed that he 
wasn’t “billed to appear.” 

But before Bony attained this place in the 
limelight, Doctor Hugh and Jack Welles ar¬ 
rived for their promised two weeks’ visit and 
vacation. Even her marvelous pig could not 
hope to compete with these arrivals and Sarah’s 
interest in Bony slackened slightly though she 
kept him rigorously in training. 

The doctor and Jack came in the former’s car. 
It was difficult to say whose disappointment was 
keenest when Jack announced that he intended 
to sleep at the bungalow and eat at Mr. Hil¬ 
dreth’s table—Mrs. Willis, Winnie and Rose¬ 
mary were equally dismayed. 

“Jack dear, I thought of course you’d live 




174 


RAINBOW HILL 


with us,” protested Mrs. Willis. “You know 
we’ll love to have you and I’m afraid you won’t 
be comfortable at the bungalow.” 

" “It won’t be any kind of a vacation for you,” 
declared Rosemary. “You’ll have to get up at 
five o’clock because they have breakfast at six; 
and Mrs. Hildreth won’t let you put a book or a 
paper out of place—Richard says so.” 

“I’m not saying anything against her cook¬ 
ing,” pronounced Winnie, through the screen 
door, where she had been drawn by the argu¬ 
ment. “But I tell you this in all honesty, Jack 
Welles; Mrs. Hildreth puts too much salt in her 
oatmeal, to my way of thinking, and she skimps 
on the shortening in her pie crust.” 

Jack glanced across the porch at Doctor 
Hugh, who was seated in the swing with Rose¬ 
mary. 

“This isn’t a vacation, you know,” said Jack 
mildly. “I’ve hired out, at wages, and I’m to go 
to work to-morrow morning. And it is in the 
agreement that Mr. Hildreth is to ‘board and 
lodge’ me.” 

“Well, you can work for him and live here 
with us, too,” suggested Rosemary comfortably. 
“Can’t he. Mother?” 

“It’s ever so nice of you to want me,” said 




WILLING AND OBLIGING 


175 


Jack, “but you see, I’ve figured out that I want 
the complete experience; I want to get up when 
the other hired men do and eat breakfast when 
they do—Winnie wouldn’t like to get me a six 
o’clock breakfast for the next two weeks—and I 
wouldn’t let her, if she did.” 

“Richard doesn’t think you’ll stick it out for 
the whole two weeks,” offered the placid Sarah, 
looking up from the book she was sharing with 
Shirley on the grass rug. “He said so.” 

Jack flushed, Doctor Hugh looked annoyed 
and Mrs. Willis sighed. Sarah’s remarks usu¬ 
ally aroused varied emotions. 

“I think Jack is quite right,” said the doctor 
firmly, before anyone could speak. “He wants 
to see this thing through and while he knows I’d 
like first rate to have him stay here at the house, 
I think he’d be handicapped from the start. 
There’ll be the evenings left him, anyway, and 
Sundays—two of them at least.” 

“You must come to us for Sunday dinner,” 
planned Mrs. Willis instantly. “I’ll ask Rich¬ 
ard and Warren, too; Winnie has wanted me to 
for some time, but there never seemed to be a 
mutually convenient time.” 

So Jack took his suit case over to the bunga¬ 
low and was introduced to the little room next 




176 


RAINBOW HILL 


to the one shared by Warren and Richard. He 
had met Mr. and Mrs. Hildreth on one of his 
trips to Rainbow Hill with Doctor Hugh, but 
he had not seen Warren and Richard till this 
afternoon. 

The three boys shook hands pleasantly. Jack 
was the youngest by a couple of years and not 
so deeply tanned; though, being an active lad 
and fond of outdoor sports, he had acquired a 
coat of brown since the closing of school. But 
he felt, looking at the other two, that he lacked 
their muscular advantage and a certain hardness 
that bespoke sturdy endurance. 

“I’m ready to go to work , 55 said Jack, in re¬ 
sponse to a question from Mr. Hildreth. “Tve 
brought overalls and I’m said to be willing and 
obliging.” 

Richard grinned and Warren’s gray eyes 
smiled. 

“Well, I hope you’ll tumble up early in the 
morning,” observed the farmer, his mind busy 
already with the next day’s work. “We’re go¬ 
ing to start picking tomatoes for the cannery.” 

There wasn’t much thrill about the persistent 
ringing of the alarm clock the next morning and 
Jack turned over with a groan. The dial said 
five o’clock, though he was sure he had not been 
asleep longer than two hours. 





WILLING AND OBLIGING 


177 


“Morning,” was Mr. Hildreth’s brief greet¬ 
ing when he met his new hand at the back door. 
“Glad to see you made it. Warren’s your boss 
—he knows what has to he done. You’ll find 
him out in the barn, milking.” 

Even a careless observer—and Jack was not 
that—would have been struck with the dewy 
freshness of the grass and shrubbery and the 
magnificent splendor of the Eastern sky; and 
Jack, on his way to the barn, drew a deep breath 
of something like contentment. 

“Not so bad,” he thought, beginning to 
whistle. “Not so bad, after all.” 

Warren glanced up from his milking, his eyes 
cordial, his busy hands continuing their task. 

“Mr. Hildreth said you’re my boss,” said Jack 
directly. “What do you want me to do?” 

“You can’t milk, can you?” replied Warren. 
“No, of course, you haven’t been around cows. 
Richard is feeding and cleaning the horses—you 
might help him.” 

Jack was inclined to remember the remark 
Sarah had attributed to Richard, but five min¬ 
utes spent in that cheerful youth’s company were 
enough to dispel any faint resentment he might 
feel. Richard liked to chatter and he liked to 
sing and whistle; and while he showed Jack what 




178 


RAINBOW HILL 


constituted a proper breakfast for a horse and 
how these useful beasts should be groomed, he 
kept up a running fire of comment and good- 
natured musical effort that made up in volume 
what it lacked in depth. By the time Warren’s 
pails were full and the barn work done, the three 
boys were on a friendly footing and they 
marched into breakfast to the tune of “There 
Were Three Crows Sat in a Tree.” 

Jack could have found it in his heart to wish 
that Mrs. Hildreth might think less of time 
and more of passing comfort. The dining-room 
of the bungalow was fully furnished, but the 
farmer’s wife used it only on state occasions. It 
made less work, she said, to eat in the kitchen and 
she could “get through” a meal more rapidly and 
take fewer steps when those to be served were 
close to the stove. 

It fell to the lot of Jack to be close to the 
stove this morning and he gave a momentary 
sigh for the coolness and order and daintiness 
that he knew would give atmosphere to the 
breakfast in Mrs. Willis’ household. Not that 
he minded eating in the kitchen—he and his 
mother often did that when his father was away 
and thought it a lark; but he did mind the heat 



WILLING AND OBLIGING 


179 


and the haste and the silence in which this, his 
first meal with the Hildreths, was consumed. 

“Ready?” said Warren briefly, when they had 
finished, leading the way to the barn. 

They had been working in the barnyard and 
vegetable garden for an hour and were on their 
way to the tomato field—it was necessary to 
wait for the heavy dew to dry before they began 
to work among the vines—when the Willis fam¬ 
ily gathered for their breakfast at the round 
table set on the porch this warm morning in Doc¬ 
tor Hugh’s honor. 

“Hugh, will you come watch me wade in the 
brook?” asked Shirley, eating her cereal as 
though hypnotized and quite forgetting to pro¬ 
test that she didn’t see why she had to drink 
milk. 

“You wait till you see Bony, Hugh,” Sarah 
told him. “He’s the best pig you ever saw. He’s 
bright.” 

“I wish, if you have time, Hugh,” said Rose¬ 
mary, “you’d show me what is the matter with the 
camera. Every picture I take is overexposed.” 

“For mercy’s sake, let your brother rest,” 
Winnie admonished them, bringing in a plate 
of fresh Parker House rolls. “He only gets a 
bit of a breathing spell and he doesn’t want to 




180 


RAINBOW HILL 


race from one end of this farm to the other. 
Take that large brown one, Hughie.” 

Mrs. Willis, behind the silver coffee pot, 
smiled at her son. 

“Best rolls I ever ate, Winnie,” he said appre¬ 
ciatively. “I’ll bet if Mr. Greggs’ wife could 
make rolls like these he’d be a sweeter-tempered 
carpenter. I’m going to have the finest of vaca¬ 
tions and rest thoroughly by going everywhere 
with everybody. I’ll watch you wade, Shirley; 
and I’ll give Sarah my opinion of this remark¬ 
able pig; Rosemary and I will ‘snap’ the whole 
farm. But I wish it distinctly understood that 
Mother and I have an unbreakable engagement 
to take a drive every afternoon, or just after 
dinner, as she prefers.” 

“And won’t you have to go see any sick peo¬ 
ple at all?” demanded Shirley, almost upsetting 
her glass of milk in the excitement of having a 
brother with time to spare. 

“I left word with Mrs. Welles that I’d an¬ 
swer emergency calls, of course,” explained Doc¬ 
tor Hugh, answering his mother’s unspoken 
question. “I’ve arranged it so I won’t have to 
go the hospital and, barring the unforeseen, I 
can count on a free fortnight. So we’ll hope 



WILLING AND OBLIGING 


181 


there won’t be any sick people to go see, Shir¬ 
ley.” 

“Where are you going, Rosemary?” the doc¬ 
tor hailed her as she and Sarah started down the 
lawn after breakfast was over. 

“We thought we’d go down and see Jack,” 
called Rosemary. 

Doctor Hugh pushed open the screen door 
and came down the steps. 

“Let Jack get his bearings first,” he advised. 
“There is bound to be a number of new experi¬ 
ences for him this initial day and I think it will 
be kinder to let him get adjusted to his job. 
He’ll be up this evening and you and Mother 
can play for him and cheer him up generally.” 

“Why—why—will he need cheering up?” 
Rosemary looked so startled that her brother 
laughed. 

“Not precisely cheering up, perhaps,” he said, 
“but a mental and physical rest. Jack is bound 
to have sore muscles, after a long day bending 
over tomato crates; he thinks he knows what it 
means to work, but he has never worked in his 
life as he will now. And I don’t know, but I sus¬ 
pect, he may have a sore mind; Jack has never 
worked for anyone and he must learn to be 




182 


RAINBOW HILL 


‘bossed.’ All in all, Rosemary, I’d put off go¬ 
ing down to the tomato field till to-morrow.” 

“Well—all right,” agreed Rosemary reluc¬ 
tantly. “I do think he might have stayed with 
us and then he would have had a better time.” 

“If we’re not going down to the field, I’ll go 
get Bony and take him down to the brook,” said 
Sarah, quick to seize her advantage. “I can 
wash him while Shirley goes wading.” 





CHAPTER XVIII 


A NEW FRIEND 


HEY spent the morning down at the 



brook. Shirley was enchanted to be al¬ 


lowed to help build a dam—the height 


of his ambition, Doctor Hugh whimsically told 
them. Shirley paddled around in the brook and 
brought him stones and he laid them in a chain 
that made a crude dam, both getting very warm 
and very wet and having a thoroughly enjoyable 
time of it. 

Rosemary had brought the camera and snap¬ 
ped a dozen poses of the sunny-haired Shirley 
as she gamboled about with her skirts tucked up 
to her waist, looking like a particularly chubby 
elf. Doctor Hugh had done something to the 
camera that would, Rosemary was sure, correct 
her tendency to overexpose a film and the re¬ 
sults fully justified her faith; whether it was due 
to his manipulation of the “innards” of the cam¬ 
era or his instructions to her, the prints were ex¬ 
ceptionally good and clear. 


183 


184 


RAINBOW HILL 


Sarah, of course, devoted her morning to 
scrubbing the pig. The doctor’s shouts of laugh¬ 
ter could not persuade her to curtail the cere¬ 
mony in the slightest detail. She had brought 
soap and towels and brush with her and she 
gravely scrubbed and rinsed and dried Bony and 
put him out in the sun to dry. 

“He’ll bake,” protested Doctor Hugh, when, 
the pig’s bath finished, Sarah arranged him on a 
dry towel in the sun. “You’ll have roast pork, 
Sarah, if you’re not careful.” 

“No I won’t,” answered Sarah confidently, 
straightening the pig’s legs for him since he did 
not offer to move. 

“Can’t he even grunt?” demanded Doctor 
Hugh who had never seen an animal so willing 
to be waited upon. 

“Of course he can grunt—” Sarah was indig¬ 
nant. “He can do anything.” 

“When the sun dries him on that side, she’ll 
turn him over on the other,” whispered Rose¬ 
mary. “You’ll see.” 

The dam was built, the roll of films used up 
and Bony dry and immaculate by the time Win¬ 
nie rang the bell to tell them that lunch was 
ready. 

“We must have a picnic,” said Doctor Hugh 





A NEW FRIEND 


185 


as they went up to the house, he carrying Shir¬ 
ley, who objected to putting on her socks and 
sandals, and Sarah carrying the pig with almost 
as much care. “I haven’t been to a picnic in 
years.” 

That afternoon he carried his mother off for a 
drive in the car, and the three girls were left to 
their own devices. Rosemary’s natural inclina¬ 
tion was to find Jack and ask him how his day 
was going, but mindful of her brother’s advice, 
she resolved to wait. She was playing jack 
stones with Shirley and Sarah when Mrs. Hil¬ 
dreth came hurrying across the lawn. 

“Rosemary,” she said, fanning her flushed 
face with her apron, “I wonder if you’d do me a 
favor. All the men are busy and I couldn’t ask 
them to drop their work for such a trifle; and I 
have to grease the chickens for lice, so I can’t go 
myself.” 

Mrs. Hildreth always seemed to choose the 
* hottest days for the most unlovely tasks, re¬ 
flected Rosemary, but Sarah held a different 
opinion. 

“I’ll come hold ’em for you, Mrs. Hildreth,” 
she offered, rising in such haste that she almost 
knocked Shirley off the step. “I love to see you 
grease chickens!” 





186 


RAINBOW HILL 


“All right, I do need somebody to help me,” 
said Mrs. Hildreth gratefully. “Rosemary, 
Miss Clinton telephoned me this morning she 
wanted a dozen fresh eggs—why do they always 
say ‘fresh eggs’?” she broke off irritably. 
“ ’Tisn’t likely I’d go out and get her a dozen 
stale eggs, even if I could find ’em. Well, she 
wants them this afternoon and I hate to disap¬ 
point her. She’s kind of used to getting what she 
wants and everybody feels sorry for her. I know 
you like to walk and when I saw your mother and 
brother going off in the car, I says, ‘Maybe she 
won’t mind walking over there for me, having 
nothing else to do.’ ” 

“I’ll go,” said Rosemary pleasantly, “but 
where does this Miss Clinton live?” 

Mrs. Hildreth gave minute directions for find¬ 
ing the house. It was close to the road, the same 
road that went past the Gay farm, but in the 
opposite direction. It wasn’t over a quarter of 
a mile and Rosemary was to knock on the door 
and when someone called “Come in” to lift the 
latch and enter. 

“I’ll take Shirley with me,” said Rosemary, 
“and you’ll tell Winnie, won’t you, Mrs. Hil¬ 
dreth? She went down to the mail box at the 



A NEW FRIEND 


187 


cross-roads to mail a letter and she’ll wonder 
where we are when she comes back.” 

Mrs. Hildreth promised to tell Winnie and 
she and Sarah departed to begin their war on 
the chicken pests while Rosemary and Shirley 
set off to follow the back road to the little yel¬ 
low house where Miss Clinton lived. 

They found it without difficulty, knocked and 
heard someone call “Come in,” just as Mrs. Hil¬ 
dreth had predicted. 

“How do you do?” said the same voice when 
they stepped directly into a large square room. 
“I’m very glad to see you.” 

A very tiny old lady sat in a wheel chair in the 
center of the room. Her skin was almost as yel¬ 
low as the paint on the house and considerably 
more wrinkled. She had bright black eyes that 
reminded Rosemary of a bird and little, eager 
claw-like hands that were strangely bird-like, 
too. She beamed at the girls, plainly delighted 
to have company. 

“I’m glad you came,” she said when Rosemary 
had given her the eggs and explained they were 
from Rainbow Hill. “Mrs. Hildreth told me 
the Hammonds rented their house this summer. 
Sit down and we’ll talk. Let the little girl pkiy 
with the toys in the cabinet—she won’t hurt ’em.” 




188 


RAINBOW HILL 


The cabinet stood in one corner of the room 
and was well stocked with toys, some new, some 
well-worn. Shirley sat down on the floor and 
amused herself contentedly while Miss Clinton 
kept up a running fire of comment till Rose¬ 
mary’s wrist watch showed half-past four. 

“I wish you’d come see me again,” said the 
old lady wistfully. “I get lonesome for someone 
to talk to. I get around pretty good in this 
chair and I have lots of hooks and papers to read; 
hut I like to talk and summers everyone is so 
busy they don’t think to drop in.” 

“I’ll drop in,” promised Rosemary impul¬ 
sively. “Mother would come to see you, too, but 
she couldn’t walk this far; perhaps Hugh, my 
brother, will bring her some day.” 

“Let me have my knitting, if you’re really go¬ 
ing,” said Miss Clinton regretfully. “It’s there 
in that basket beside you. That’s my sixth bed¬ 
spread, or will he, when I get it finished.” 

“What beautiful work!” exclaimed Rosemary 
as the old lady spread the knitted square over 
her knee. “How fine it is—isn’t it very diffi¬ 
cult?” 

“Not a hit,” Miss Clinton assured her. “I do 
it when my eyes get tired of reading print. I’ll 
teach you how to make a spread, if you’ll come 





A NEW FRIEND 


189 


see me now and then,” she offered quickly. 
“They tell me they’re worth sev&ity-five dollars 
apiece but I never sell mine; I give them to rela¬ 
tives and friends.” 

Rosemary and Shirley said good by and were 
half way down the path when the door was 
opened and Miss Clinton called after them: 

“Bring the little girl with you, too; I’ll get 
her something new to play with when she gets 
tired of the cabinet toys.” 

“Rosemary,” said Shirley, skipping happily— 
she seldom walked, her brother said, but ran or 
hopped her way along—“Rosemary, what is 
there?” 

“Where?” said Rosemary, puzzled. 

“There” insisted Shirley, pointing behind her. 

“Why, nothing—except Miss Clinton’s house 
—you know that, Shirley,” replied Rosemary. 

“No, not Miss Clinton’s house,” said Shirley, 
shaking her head. “Next to that, Rosemary.” 

“You mean around the curve?” asked Rose¬ 
mary, for the road curved sharply beyond the 
big maples that marked the line of Miss Clin¬ 
ton’s property. 

Shirley nodded. 

“What is there?” she repeated. 

“I don’t know, dear,” Rosemary admitted. 




190 


RAINBOW HILL 


“I’ve never been that far. Do you want to go 
and see? We have time, I think.” 

Shirley slipped a small hand into her sister’s. 

“Let’s go,” she said eagerly. 

Rosemary had often felt a curiosity to know 
what was beyond a bend in a road, but she never 
remembered making a deliberate attempt to 
gratify that feeling. Shirley, having been made 
curious, had no mind to go away unsatisfied. 

They turned and walked back, Rosemary hop¬ 
ing the little old lady might not see them. Rut 
she was nowhere in sight and was, in all proba¬ 
bility, absorbed in her knitting. 

“Maybe the three bears live around the cor¬ 
ner,” suggested Shirley, beginning to regret her 
curiosity as they neared the turn. 

“The Big Bear and the Middle Bear and the 
Little Bear?” said Rosemary. “I wonder if they 
do? In a cunning little house, Shirley, with 
three beds and three porridge bowls—wouldn’t 
that be fun?” 

Shirley pressed closer. She preferred to hear 
about the three bears, rather than meet them face 
to face. 

A few minutes’ walk brought them to the 
curve and around it—and there was a vegetable 
stand; almost a small market, with fruits and 





A NEW FRIEND 


191 


garden produce attractively displayed and a 
number of boldly painted signs announcing that 
fresh eggs and dressed poultry were for sale on 
specified days of the week. 

“Is it a store? 5 ’ asked Shirley, much interested. 

“It’s like a store,” Rosemary told her. “I re¬ 
member Hugh was telling Mother something 
about this plan the other night. He said that 
down on the shore road he saw lots and lots of 
stands, when he spent his summers at Seapoint. 
And he was wondering why some of the 
farmers inland didn’t do this—sell to people who 
have automobiles.” 

“Do people come and buy?” asked Shirley, 
staring at the tomatoes as though she had never 
seen that homely vegetable before. 

“Yes, they come out in their cars, from Ben¬ 
nington and further away, I suppose,” said 
Rosemary. “And they buy all this stuff fresh 
and take it home with them. I wonder who takes 
care of the stand?” 

A sharp, thin, freckled face rose slowly from 
behind the tiers of baskets and a reedy voice 
announced, “I do—want to buy anything?” 

Rosemary jumped. She had not known there 
was anyone near. Now she saw the owner of 




192 


RAINBOW HILL 


the freckled face was a girl, a few years older 
than herself. 

“Do you take care of the stand?” Rosemary 
asked, smiling her friendly smile. 

The freckle-faced one nodded. 

“That’s my job summers,” she confided. 
“Winters I’m studying. I’m going to be a 
school teacher. What are you going to be?” 

Rosemary pulled Shirley back from a contem¬ 
plated investigation of a basket of early pears. 

“Why—I don’t believe I know,” she answered 
the question. “I’ve thought of being a nurse— 
my brother Hugh is a doctor \ or I might be a 
music teacher.” 

“I’m going to teach school,” the other girl de¬ 
clared again. “I’m going to have some pretty 
dresses and go to the city every Saturday, if I 
have a mind to. What’s your name?” 

“Rosemary Willis,” Rosemary answered 
meekly. “This is my sister, Shirley.” 

“I’m Edith Barrow,” the girl announced. “I 
don’t live here, except in summer. I help Mr. 
and Mrs. Mains—know them?” 

Rosemary shook her head. 

“We’re here for the summer,” she replied. 

“Renters,” said Edith Barrow as though that 
catalogued the Willis family as perhaps it did. 





A NEW FRIEND 


193 


“Well, when I’m going to school I live with my 
aunt. She boards students. I don’t suppose 
you’re in high school yet?” 

“Don’t touch those onions, Shirley,” Rose¬ 
mary warned. “No, I’m not in high school—not 
for a year. In June I’ll graduate from the East- 
shore grammar school,” she explained. 

“Do you like keeping store?” asked Shirley, 
who had kept still longer than usual. She may 
have thought it was her turn to ask questions. 

“This isn’t a store—it’s a stand,” Edith cor¬ 
rected her. “Yes, I like it well enough. I took 
in twelve dollars yesterday. You have to be 
good at arithmetic to make change; that’s why 
Mr. Mains likes me to be out here. Mrs. Mains 
can’t tell how much money to give back when 
she gets a bill from a customer.” 

“Have you any candy?” was Shirley’s next 
query. 

“Not a bit,” Edith Barrow answered. “Only 
things that are good for you to eat. Candy 
makes you sick. Did you know that?” 

Rosemary couldn’t help thinking that, young 
as she was, Edith already talked like a school 
teacher. 

“Like the fussy kind,” Rosemary emended to 
herself. 




194 


RAINBOW HILL 


“Here comes a car now,” said the young sales- 
woman suddenly. “They’re going to stop—I 
know them. I hope they’d want tomatoes to¬ 
day. We haven’t much else.” 

“We’ll have to go,” Rosemary declared hast¬ 
ily. “Good by—say good by, Shirley.” 

“She isn’t looking at me,” complained Shirley 
and indeed Edith was centering her attention on 
the coming car and her thoughts were evidently 
all for the approaching sale. 

“Jack would say she was chasing success,” 
' Rosemary told herself smiling as she took Shir¬ 
ley’s hand and led her away. 

Doctor Hugh and his mother were on the 
porch when Rosemary and Shirley reached the 
house, but Sarah was nowhere in sight. When a 
few minutes later she walked out among them, 
radiantly clean, attired in fresh tan linen, her 
shining dark hair neatly brushed, her family 
welcomed her with delighted surprise. 

“How nice you look!” said her mother appre¬ 
ciatively. 

“I wish you could have seen her half an hour 
ago,” announced Winnie from the doorway. 

Her words were in direct opposition to her 
desire, for she went on to say that she had met 
Sarah as the latter came from the chicken yard. 




A NEW FRIEND 


195 


“She was grease from head to foot,” pro¬ 
nounced Winnie, while Sarah sat down on the 
rug and looked innocent. “You’d have thought, 
to look at her, that Mrs. Hildreth had been 
greasing her and not the chickens; there were 
feathers in her hair and dirt ground into her 
face and hands, and she must have been sitting 
in the dust pile where the chickens scratch. I 
had to give her a bath and change every stitch 
of her clothes, because I was afraid you wouldn’t 
know her. And if dinner is late to-night, you 
can thank Sarah Eaton Willis.” 

“I’ll come set the table,” offered Rosemary, 
jumping up. 

As she laid the knives and forks, she told Win¬ 
nie about her visit to Miss Clinton. 

“I know her,” declared Winnie, slicing bread 
—she had fastened back the communicating door 
between the kitchen and the dining-room. “At 
least I know of her; Mrs. Hildreth was telling 
me the other day. She’s a woman who likes 
company—that’s all she wants and all she doesn’t 
get, summer times at least. I never saw a neigh¬ 
borhood like this one—I don’t believe any of the 
farmers dare die in July or August for fear 
their friends couldn’t stop farming long enough 
to come to the funeral.” 



196 


RAINBOW HILL 


Rosemary giggled. 

“Is she poor, Winnie?” she asked with frank 
curiosity. 

“My, no, not that I have heard tell of,” an¬ 
swered Winnie. “She has an income of her own 
and plenty of relatives, scattered hereabouts. I 
believe a niece comes and stays with her during 
the winter months—her brother’s daughter. 
Mrs. Hildreth was telling me that she writes 
hundreds of letters—though I guess she can’t 
write as many as that—and she wheels herself 
out to the mail box and back in that chair and 
washes dishes and everything, sitting in it. But 
summers she gets fearfully lonesome. The 
neighbors run in a good deal in the winter and 
hold sewing-circle meetings there, but they 
haven’t time to bother in the growing season.” 

“She had toys in a cabinet—Shirley played 
with them and she said she’d get her some more 
if she tired of those,” said Rosemary, placing the 
chairs. “Do many children go see her, Winnie?” 

“Mrs. Hildreth told me she keeps those toys 
to amuse the children who may come visiting 
with their mothers,” explained Winnie. “Miss 
Clinton figured that if the children had some¬ 
thing to play with they wouldn’t be in a hurry 
to go home. Downright pathetic, I call it, to 





A NEW FRIEND 


197 


be so hungry for someone to talk to that you try 
to bribe people to stay a little longer.” 

“I’m going to see her,” Rosemary said, as she 
filled the water glasses. “I told her I’d come— 
it isn’t far to go and I have plenty of time. Can 
I do anything more, Winnie?” 

“Nothing except to tell your mother dinner 
is ready,” was Winnie’s grateful reply. “You 
are the handiest child, sometimes, Rosemary, 
and I declare I don’t know how I should have 
got dinner on the table to-night without a bit of 
a lift. I hate to be late, too, when Hughie is 
here.” 

“I hope Jack comes up to talk to-night,” said 
Rosemary as they sat down at the table. “I 
want to know if it is fun to earn your own living. 
I’m going to try it myself some day.” 




CHAPTER XIX 


JACK—HIRED MAN 

I T wasn’t all fun, Jack assured her when, soon 
after dinner, he came toiling up the grass 
path and mounted the porch steps wearily. 
“I never was so tired in my life,” he declared. 
“Gee, I thought I was ‘hard’ enough—I’ve been 
fishing lots since school closed and that isn’t a 
lazy man’s work especially if you wade up¬ 
stream. I’ve hiked miles and I’ve worked in 
the garden at home; but at this minute I have 
three hundred and ninety-eight muscles creak¬ 
ing in my machinery that I never knew before 
existed.” 

Doctor Hugh tossed him an extra sofa cush¬ 
ion and Jack stuffed it behind his back as he sat 
in one of the comfortable wicker chairs. 

“Where’s Richard and Warren?” demanded 
Sarah. “I want to tell them about greasing the 
chickens. Jack, did you ever grease chickens?” 

“Now look here, Sarah,” protested Doctor 
Hugh hastily, “we’ve listened to the unsavory 
198 


JACK-HIRED MAN 199 

— \ -- "" 1 ■■-=^ 

details of that process once and not even for 
Jack’s sake can we go through it again. Besides, 
Jack has a recital of his own; you come sit with 
me and we’ll listen to an agricultural lecture.” 

Sarah and Shirley both rushed to accept the 
invitation and after some skirmishing managed 
to squeeze into the one big chair. 

“Warren and Richard have gone down to the 
brook,” reported Jack. “Mr. Hildreth thinks 
someone from town is gigging there nights and 
they want to keep a watch. I haven’t enough 
ambition to catch a worm, let alone a gigger.” 

“What’s gigging?” cried Sarah, twisting 
about so that she placed her feet in Rosemary’s 
lap. 

“Gigging is fishing at night,” said Jack 
briefly. “I’ll show you sometime—when I can 
bend my knees again.” 

Doctor Hugh adroitly shifted the wandering 
feet by turning Sarah back to her original posi¬ 
tion. 

“The first day is always the hardest,” he said 
encouragingly. “You will live through to-mor¬ 
row, if that’s any comfort, Jack.” 

“Well, of course, I’m not complaining,” Jack 
declared. “I don’t expect to pick roses—ouch! 
—and I won’t grunt. But that tomato field 
must be twenty miles long!” 




200 


RAINBOW HILL 


Rosemary played for him presently and Mrs. 
Willis brought out the drop cakes she had 
“saved” for him, and before it was nine o’clock— 
his self-imposed bed-time—Jack felt more cheer¬ 
ful in spirit if not in muscle. 

But the days that followed tested his spirit 
severely. It was, as Doctor Hugh had said, an 
entirely new experience for him to work for any¬ 
one else and to work straight through a hot sum¬ 
mer day with a brief noon hour and no free time 
planned. There were even a number of chores 
to he done after supper. “Vacation” to Jack 
had hitherto meant long, cloudless days with 
leisure to read lazily in the hammock, or go 
swimming when he pleased and license to 
grumble when his father suggested that a little 
weeding would do the garden no harm. 

It had not occurred to Jack, when he so • 
blithely decided to hire out to Mr. Hildreth, that 
he was contracting to give six days of labor—and 
part of the seventh—as a week’s work; he had 
not thought much about it, but somewhere in the 
back of his mind there had been a hazy scheme 
of affairs that included a day or two off, when 
it should be convenient for him free days which 
he would spend fishing with Doctor Hugh and 
“playing around” with Rosemary and Sarah and 




JACK—HIRED MAN 


201 


Shirley. He was surprised to find that fishing 
and kindred sports had no place on Warren and 
Richard’s schedule; work was a serious thing to 
them and in their experience money was not to 
be easily earned. 

Jack said little, hut an undercurrent of fric¬ 
tion began to develop between him and Warren 
though to do him justice Warren was more than 
ordinarily thoughtful and ready to make every 
allowance for Jack’s inexperience. But natur¬ 
ally the issuing of orders fell to him and he was 
made responsible for the volume of work accom¬ 
plished each day. Mr. Hildreth permitted no 
excuses for failure in tasks set and though ex¬ 
tremely just he had a shrewd and accurate 
knowledge of the time required for each chore 
and the amount of finished work to be turned 
out each hour. 

Jack and Richard “hit it off together” very 
well, too well, in fact; they began to “fool,” to 
skylark and, insensibly, waste time. When War¬ 
ren interfered it was in the role of kill-joy, a 
character he did not fancy. When, on his re¬ 
turn from driving a load of tomatoes to the 
cannery one afternoon, instead of finding filled 
crates ready for a second trip, he discovered that 
neither boy had picked a tomato and that they 




RAINBOW HILL 


202 

had broken several crates and mashed a quantity 
of ripe tomatoes in good-natured tussling, War¬ 
ren spoke sharply and to the point. He sent 
Jack to one end of a row and Richard to the 
other and kept them separated the remainder of 
the afternoon. 

The team was another grievance. Jack was 
sure he could he trusted to drive Solomon and 
his mate to the cannery and back and this haul¬ 
ing afforded a welcome break in a monotonous 
day. But Mr. Hildreth flatly refused to allow. 
Jack to handle the horses and either he or War¬ 
ren made the twice a day trip to the Center. 

“I’ll quit to-morrow,” said Jack desperately, 
night after night. 

And in the morning he would decide to stick 
it out another day. 

Twice he went to sleep in his chair on the porch 
of the little white house, waking to find that Mrs. 
Hildreth and the girls had gone to bed and left 
Doctor Hugh, reading quietly under the lamp, 
to keep him company. 

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” said the doctor 
when Jack stammered his apology. “After a 
day of honest toil, Nature’s going to exact her 
toll. You’ll he as hard as nails, Jack, if you 
keep this up.” 





JACK—HIRED MAN 


203 


The girls soon accepted the idea that Jack 
was not free to go about with them and made 
their plans without including him. Rosemary 
went nearly every day to see Miss Clinton, on 
some pretext or other, and Shirley often ac¬ 
companied her. Rosemary was rapidly learn¬ 
ing to knit the blocks for a bedspread with which 
she intended to surprise her mother. Sarah gave 
most of her time and attention to Bony, but she 
also visited the Gays though, in the excitement 
and pleasure of having Doctor Hugh at their 
beck and call, it is to be regretted that the Gay 
family were left more to themselves than Rose¬ 
mary or her sisters intended. 

Jack’s irritation culminated in the second 
week of his contract. True to her promise, Mrs. 
Willis had asked the three boys to Sunday din¬ 
ner and, under the mellowing influence of Win¬ 
nie’s best cooking and the friendly atmosphere 
of the little white house, the tension had relaxed 
and the afternoon spent on the porch had been 
restful for at least three of the group and happy 
for all. 

“I’m going fishing to-morrow,” announced 
Doctor Hugh, a night or two later. “The alarm 
clock is set for four and I’m coming home when 
the last nibble plays me false.” 




204 


RAINBOW HILL 


“Care if I go along?” said Jack impulsively. 
“I haven’t had a hit of fishing since I’ve been 
here. I brought my rod and tackle in case I had 
a chance, but I haven’t unpacked them yet.” 

The creak of the swing ceased suddenly. War¬ 
ren had been swaying back and forth gently in 

the darkness. _ > 

“Why—no—come along, if it’s all right, 
said the doctor, after a moment’s hesitation. 

“I’ll meet you at the barn,” promised Jack. 
“Gee, it will seem good to take a day off.” 

Still Warren said nothing. The three boys 
had said good night and walked almost to the 
bungalow before he spoke. 

“Are you really planning to go fishing to¬ 
morrow, Jack?” he asked quietly. 

“Of course,” said Jack shortly. 

“What about the work?” 

“One day out won’t wreck the crops,” haz¬ 
arded J ack. . 

“Don’t stand here arguing all night, ^ urged 
Richard. “Come on—I’m going to bed.” 

Warren paid no attention and continued to 
address Jack. 

“If you don’t turn out in the morning 111 
know you’ve quit,” he said. 

“I’m not fired till Mr. Hildreth says so,” an¬ 
grily retorted J ack. 




JACK—HIRED MAN 


205 


“You work to-morrow, or you’re through,” 
declared Warren, a steel edge to his voice. “I’m 
bossing this job and it doesn’t happen to be one 
that can wait anyone’s personal convenience.” 

They tramped upstairs to their rooms, Jack 
inwardly seething. He took off one shoe and 
hurled it across the bed as a relief to his feelings. 

He’d show Warren Baker! It was a pity if 
a fellow had to ask him every time he wanted a 
few hours to himself—he didn’t have to have 
money, anyway—he’d let the old job slide. He 
had come up voluntarily to “hire out” and he 
didn’t intend to be treated like a day laborer. 

The other shoe followed the first. 

Richard had said he wouldn’t “stick it out” 
for two weeks. Perhaps he ought not to quit 
with the time so nearly gone. Mr. Hildreth 
would, of course, uphold Warren. He would 
hate to be left short-handed in such beautiful 
picking weather, but he would not condone a 
fishing trip. And there was his record—Jack 
was secretly rather proud of that; he and Rich¬ 
ard were keeping count of the number of crates 
each picked daily and Jack had high hopes of 
outdistancing Richard before the end of the 
week. Maybe he might stay his week out—just 
to show Richard! 




206 


RAINBOW HILL 


Doctor Hugh waited twenty minutes for Jack 
the next morning, then rightly concluded that 
he had changed his mind. Warren, meeting 
Jack in the barn at the usual hour, said “good 
morning” pleasantly, but Jack merely gave a 
curt nod. He might be working, but there was 
no reason why he should pretend to like it, he 
said to himself childishly. 

He went about his chores jerkily, still “sore” 
as Richard described it and, as industrial statis¬ 
tics demonstrate, ill temper lowers our guard; 
another time Jack might have been more careful, 
but this morning he caught his finger on a nail 
in the harness room and tore an ugly gash down 
its brown length. 

He said nothing about the accident, washed 
the cut as well as he could and went doggedly to 
work after breakfast at the interminable rows of 
tomatoes. 

Doctor Hugh and his car returned with a most 
respectable “catch” about four o’clock that after¬ 
noon and the lucky fisherman suggested that 
company be asked to dinner to enjoy the fish. 

“I never saw such acting boys—never!” 
scolded Rosemary, who had volunteered to be 
the messenger. “They won’t any of them come! 
Warren said he was too tired to talk to anyone 



JACK—HIRED MAN 


207 


and Jack said ‘No’—just like that—he is too 
cross for words! And then Richard said if they 
were going to act like ninnies he wasn’t going to 
come and make excuses for them, so he said ‘No 
thank you,’ too.” 

“Jack has a sore finger,” said Sarah wisely. 
“I heard Richard tell him he ought to take care 
of it and Jack told him to mind his own affairs.” 

“Well, it’s been a warm day and perhaps 
they’re entitled to be cross,” said Doctor Hugh 
pacifically. “We’ll send Mrs. Hildreth three 
of the fish and if she fries them as well as Winnie 
does, there may be a peace treaty signed.” 




CHAPTER XX 

A LITTLE GIRL LOST 

M RS. HILDRETH may not have been 
as good a cook as Winnie. Whatever 
the reason, no one came whistling up 
from the bungalow after dinner to suggest 
“Let’s hear c 01d Black Joe, J ” or to offer to play 
a game of croquet. Presently Doctor Hugh 
announced that he was going to walk down to 
see Jack, and Rosemary went with him. Sarah 
and Shirley were, with some difficulty, persuaded 
to remain behind. 

“Nobody home,” was Richard’s disconso¬ 
late greeting as he rose from the porch railing. 
“Mr. Hildreth has gone across fields to borrow 
some more crates and Mrs. Hildreth is setting 
bread in the kitchen. Warren has gone to the 
Center and Jack is nursing a grouch upstairs.” 

“Well, I came to see Jack,” said the doctor. 
“I’ll go up in a minute.” 

“He and Warren are on the outs,” declared 
Richard frankly. “Each one thinks he is a 
Roman candle.” 


208 


A LITTLE GIRL LOST 


209 


“How perfectly horrid of Warren!” said 
Rosemary hotly. 

“Warren?” echoed the bewildered Richard. 
“What has Warren done to you?” 

“He hasn’t done anything to me—” Rose¬ 
mary’s color began to rise. “But I don’t think 
he is one bit fair to Jack.” 

Before Richard could argue this, the door 
opened and Jack came out. He had heard 
voices and perhaps wished to discourage the in¬ 
tention of the doctor to come up and see him. 
He sat down on the opposite side of the step 
from Rosemary and her brother and put one 
hand carelessly behind him. 

“Hello!” he said grumpily. 

“Say, those fish were fine,” declared Richard, 
feeling his responsibility as host, since Jack did 
not seem moved to speech. “They were so fresh, 
I could almost see ’em leaping out of the brook. 
You must have had good luck.” 

“First-rate,” said the doctor. “Sorry you 
couldn’t come up to the house for dinner, Rich.” 

“Well, I could have come,” admitted Richard 
cautiously, “but I’m no good presenting regrets 
for others. Warren and Jack were peeved—” 

“You needn’t make any excuses for me,” 



210 


RAINBOW HILL 


interrupted Jack coldly, holding up a throbbing 
hand behind his back. 

“See?” said Richard with a gesture of despair. 
“What could a fellow do? And I’ll bet Winnie 
cooks fish so you never forget it.” 

“She’s a good cook,” Doctor Hugh conceded. 

Richard sighed. He wished Rosemary felt 
more talkative. In his anxiety to entertain his 
guests, he stumbled on a sore subject. 

“I used to go fishing pretty often myself,” 
he said pleasantly. “The first year we were 
in college, Warren and I went off by ourselves 
nearly every Saturday afternoon. We made 
friends with the State wardens and they told us 
a lot of useful things. Once we saw them stock a 
stream—that was great. Ever see that, Jack?” 

“No,” snapped Jack, “and I’m not likely to; 
the only thing I’ll know by the end of this sum¬ 
mer will be how many cans of tomatoes the 
Goldenrod Canning Company has packed this 
year.” 

“How do they stock a stream?” asked Rose¬ 
mary, her curiosity unloosening her tongue. 

“Oh, they have thousands of baby fish and 
they ladle ’em out like so much fine gold,” said 
Richard. “And we saw them net a pond once 
for carp—I wish I had more time to play around. 





A LITTLE GIRL LOST 


211 


Perhaps when Warren and I get our own farm 
we can carry out a few ideas of ours.” 

“What’s that you’re going to do when you get 
your own farm, Richard?” asked Mrs. Hildreth, 
coming out on the porch, looking warm and 
tired. “I declare, every summer I say I’ll have 
the baker stop here,” she added. “I get so sick 
of baking my own bread when it’s warm.” 

She did not sit down, but stood poised on the 
top step. Jack who had risen with the rest, 
kept one hand stiffly away from his body. 

“What were you saying, Richard?” asked 
Mrs. Hildreth again. 

“Oh, I was day-dreaming I guess,” Richard 
answered. “I said that when Warren and I have 
our own farm, perhaps we’ll have time to do 
some of the things we have always wanted to do.” 

Mrs. Hildreth mopped her flushed face with 
a handkerchief of generous size. 

“Well, you won’t,” she prophesied. “I never 
knew anyone who lived on a farm to have a min¬ 
ute’s time for anything but the hardest kind of 
work. Even in winter when the crops are in, 
there’s wood to get out and cut and the animals 
to be fed and bedded down and the fires to look 
after and paths to be opened and the milking to 




212 


RAINBOW HILL 


be done. It’s one thing after another, all the 
year round.” 

Richard put one arm around the porch pillar. 

“It could be different,” he insisted. “For 
instance, you could buy bread—you just said so. 
That would save you some time.” 

“Which I should feel duty-hound to use in 
canning more fruit,” countered Mrs. Hildreth 
promptly. “I’m not so keen on work, but the 
way I’m made, I feel guilty if I waste a half 
hour.” 

“It isn’t wasting time to have a little enjoy¬ 
ment and leisure,” Richard declared doggedly. 
“Is it. Jack?” 

Jack a moment before had struck his hand 
against the porch railing, a light tap, scarcely to 
be noticed. But his face was white as he turned 
savagely on Richard. 

“Work is the only thing that counts and you 
know it,” he said fiercely. “The crops and the 
crops alone, are to be considered. If you kill 
yourself getting them in, that’s a small matter; 
next year someone else will plant ’em again and 
perhaps kill himself, too.” 

“Dear me. Jack, maybe you have a little 
touch of the sun,” said Mrs. Hildreth. “I think 
the doctor had better give you something to 





A LITTLE GIRL LOST 


213 


make you sleep. You will, won’t you, Doctor 
Willis?” the good woman urged anxiously. 

“I’m all right,” said Jack. 

“Well, I’m sure I hope so,” she returned in a 
voice that was far from sounding convinced. 
“Mr. Hildreth had a brother who had a sun¬ 
stroke once and he wasn’t right for years. Were 
you working in a blaze to-day, Jack?” 

“He wore a hat,” said Richard quickly, fear¬ 
ful that Jack’s scant supply of patience would be 
utterly exhausted. “Besides, there was a breeze 
in the afternoon. It wasn’t a bad day at all, 
Mrs. Hildreth.” 

“Don’t you want to sit down, Mrs. Hildreth?” 
isuggested Rosemary, wondering how anyone 
could remain standing so long, after being on her 
feet virtually all day. 

“No, I’m going down the road in a minute,” 
Mrs. Hildreth answered. “I want to ask Mrs. 
Tice about some new kind of rubber rings she 
got for her jars. How much fruit did Winnie 
put up so far, Rosemary?” 

“Why—I don’t believe I know,” said Rose¬ 
mary with a little laugh. “She made jelly, I 
remember and she’s been canning nearly every 
week; but I don’t know how many quarts or 
or pints she has. Do you, Hugh?” 






214 


RAINBOW HILL 


“Never counted,” acknowledged the doctor 
lazily. “I’ll warrant Winnie can tell you right 
off the reel, Mrs. Hildreth. She’s proud of her 
success—I heard her tell my mother so.” 

“I’ll step over and look at her shelves some 
day ” promised Mrs. Hildreth. “Dear me, I’m 
tired. But if I don’t go to Bertha’s now. I’ll 
never get there. Tell Mr. Hildreth I’ll be right 
back, if he asks you where I am.” 

She went heavily down the steps and disap¬ 
peared across the lawn. 

Bichard dropped with an exaggerated thud. 

“Another minute and my ankles would have 
given out!” he declared. “And she thinks it is 
work that tired her out.” 

“Well, it is,” said Rosemary. “She works 
from five in the morning till nearly ten at night.” 

“But she could rest, if she only knew how,” 
Richard protested. 

“Ah, now you have it, Rich,” said Doctor 
Hugh. “There’s a great deal in knowing how 
to rest.” 

“There’s no use in knowing how, when you 
can’t rest if you want to,” Jack complained 
bitterly. 

“That isn’t a very clear sentence, Jack,” said 
the doctor. “Explain a little, won’t you?” 



A LITTLE GIRL LOST 


215 


“Oh, I’m tired,” Jack declared ungraciously, 
“and there’s nothing to explain, anyway.” 

The desultory conversation that followed was 
almost wholly between Rosemary and Richard. 
Jack was curiously silent and Doctor Hugh, too, 
seemed content to listen. Finally he rose. 

“We must be getting back,” he said. “First 
though, I’ll take a look at your hand, Jack.” 

“There’s nothing the matter with it,” coun¬ 
tered Jack gruffly. 

“You act remarkably like Sarah,” was Doc¬ 
tor Hugh’s response to this. “Come in where 
I can have a light and don’t be foolish.” 

Jack followed him sulkily and Rosemary and 
Richard watched while the doctor unwound the 
cloth that bound the injured finger. The cut 
was an angry-looking one. 

“Needs attention,” Doctor Hugh commented 
briefly. “Do you want to come up to the house 
with me, or shall I send Rosemary for the iodine 
bottle?” 

Jack elected to remain where he was, and 
Rosemary sped away to get bandages and anti¬ 
septics. Mrs. Hildreth’s tea kettle was requisi¬ 
tioned for a supply of hot water and then the 
doctor washed and dressed the cut, Jack endur¬ 
ing the process gamely. 




216 


RAINBOW HILL 


“I won’t knock off,” he said defiantly as the 
last gauze fold was fastened in place. I m 
going to pick tomatoes, if I have to do it with 
my left hand.” 

“You can use your hand, if you’ll keep the 
bandages in place,” the doctor assured him. 
“I’ll dress it again for you in the morning—and 
don’t let me have to send for you. When you 
have had breakfast, come and get your hand 
attended to, before you go into the field.” 

“He’ll feel better now,” he said to Rosemary 
as they walked slowly down the road, extending 
their walk to enjoy the beauty of the summer 
evening. “His finger was throbbing and begin¬ 
ning to fester and must have given him great 
pain all day.” 

“Here comes Warren,” whispered Rosemary. 

Warren looked warm and tired. He stopped 
when he saw them and Rosemary would have 
walked on with a short “Hello!” had not her 
brother’s hand upon her arm held her. 

“You’ve been down to the bungalow?” said 
Warren, after he had thanked them for the fish 
and congratulated the fisherman on his luck. 
“I’m sorry I missed you.” 

“We went to see Jack,” Rosemary informed 
him pointedly. “He’s sick.” 



A LITTLE GIRL LOST 


217 


“Jack sick?” Warren looked surprised and, 
though she would not have admitted it, con¬ 
cerned. 

“Not sick—but he has rather a nasty cut on 
one finger,” corrected Doctor Hugh. “He’ll 
be all right, if he follows directions.” 

Warren’s eyes were troubled. 

“I’m afraid he’s having a tough time,” he said 
regretfully. “I’m sorry, but—” he left the sen¬ 
tence unfinished. 

The storm signals in Rosemary’s expressive 
face were easily interpreted by her brother. He 
said good night to Warren and they resumed 
their walk. 

“Why didn’t you say something, Hugh!” 
burst out Rosemary, hardly waiting till they 
were beyond earshot. “Why didn’t you tell 
him that Jack is our friend and that Warren 
needn’t think he can treat him like that!” 

“I don’t know that Jack is being treated ‘like 
that,’ ” protested Doctor Hugh whimsically. 
“You looked so like a thunder cloud, Rosemary, 
that there was nothing left to be said.” 

Rosemary jerked her arm free and faced him 
tempestuously. 

“I believe you’re taking Warren’s part!” she 
accused him. “How can you? Anyway, I don’t 




218 


RAINBOW HILL 


care what you do—Jack Welles is my friend!” 

“Jack is to be envied/’ said Doctor Hugh 
gently. “Though I wish, dear, that you would 
learn to reason a little more quietly. You know 
I am very fond of Jack—he is a splendid lad 
in many ways. So is Warren. This quarrel 
between them will blow over—why Rosemary, 
you and Jack have half a dozen quarrels a year 
and none of them are serious.” 

But the next day matters remained in much 
the same uncomfortable state. Jack reported 
obediently to have his finger dressed and refused 

_with more vigor than courtesy—Warren s 

offer to release him from picking for that day. 
Rosemary had a hot argument with Sarah, who 
perversely upheld Warren s cause, and then 
quarreled with her brother, who would not admit 
that Jack was a martyr. 

“We won’t discuss it any further, Rosemary,” 
he said at last. “As far as I can judge, Warren 
is in the right and Jack is acting like a young 
and obstinate donkey.” 

The following afternoon Mrs. Willis went in 
to spend the night at the Eastshore house and 
choose the wall paper for the new suite of rooms. 
Doctor Hugh drove her in and was to drive her 
out the next morning. Jack had just finished 





A LITTLE GIRL LOST 


219 


bedding down the horses that night, and was 
wondering whether he had the energy to dress 
and go up to the little white house, when he 
heard Rosemary’s voice outside the barn. 

“Jack! Jack, where are you?” 

“Here!” Jack hurried into sight. “What’s 
the matter?” he demanded when he saw her face. 

“Sarah!” gasped Rosemary. “She didn’t 
come in to supper and none of us have seen her 
the entire afternoon. Winnie wanted to tele¬ 
phone Hugh, but I am so afraid it will worry 
Mother.” 

“Don’t telephone!” commanded Jack. “She’s 
somewhere on the place and has forgotten to 
come in; let her get hungry and she’ll turn up. 
But we’ll go find her and remind her its after 
six o’clock.” 

Jack’s cheerful matter-of-fact acceptance of 
Sarah’s absence was the surest way to relieve the 
anxiety Winnie, as well as the girls, felt. At 
once they assured each other that Sarah was 
playing somewhere on the farm and had forgot¬ 
ten to come home. The discovery that Bony was 
also missing bore out Jack’s theory; Sarah and 
the pig were having a beautiful time together. 

Leaving Winnie and the two girls to search 
the barn and outbuildings, Jack hurried off to 




220 


RAINBOW HILL 


get reinforcements. He thought of Warren as 
a tower of strength, cool, level-headed Warren 
who could manage any situation. 

Warren and Richard had finished the last 
chore and were beginning to change, when Jack 
burst unceremoniously into their room. 

“Warren!” he hurdled the wall of misunder¬ 
standing that had grown up between them in 
one agile leap. “Warren, they say Sarah "Wil¬ 
lis is lost. She didn’t come home to supper. 
Mrs. Willis is in Eastshore with Hugh to-night 
and we have to find Sarah without letting her 
mother know.” 

Warren agreed that Rainbow Hill was to be 
searched from one end to the other. He and 
Richard and Jack went in different directions 
and Mr. Hildreth took a fourth. Winnie stayed 
at the house, in case the lost one returned, and 
Rosemary and Shirley went down to Miss Clin¬ 
ton’s to ask if Sarah had perhaps been there that 
afternoon. She had not and when they came 
back Winnie put Shirley to bed for it was past 
her bed hour and she was tired and sleepy. 

No trace of Sarah was found on the farm and 
no better luck was encountered at the Gay farm, 
whither Jack went, or at the two nearest neigh¬ 
bors, queried by Warren and Richard, cau- 





A LITTLE GIRL LOST 


221 


tiously, lest the alarm spread and be relayed by 
the garrulous and unthinking to the little mother. 

“Say, Warren,” Jack stopped him as he was 
setting out again. “Old Belle isn’t in her pas¬ 
ture.” 

“Old Belle!” 

“And the light runabout and one set of single 
harness is gone—I looked.” 

“That kid couldn’t harness without help and 
get off this place—don’t tell me!” Warren’s 
tone was half skeptical, half alarmed. 

“Sarah can do anything you don’t expect her 
to do,” declared Jack. “Take it from me, that’s 
what she has done this time. But how are we to 
find out the direction she took?” 

“She’d go to Bennington,” said Warren 
quickly. “If she had gone toward Eastshore 
someone who knew her would have been sure to 
spot her; besides, she is crazy about Bennington, 
always teasing to go with Hugh.” 

Old Belle was the oldest horse on the farm, a 
shambling, half-blind creature whose days of 
work had long been over. In summer she rev¬ 
eled in clover pasture, and the warmest box stall 
and choicest oats were hers in winter. Sarah 
had ridden her around the pasture a number of 
times, but it had never occurred to anyone that 





222 


RAINBOW HILL 


she would attempt to drive her. Indeed the boys 
had not known that Sarah knew how to harness. 

Three pairs of willing hands quickly hacked 
“Tony,” Mr. Hildreth’s light driving horse, 
into the shafts of the buggy and, telling the anx¬ 
ious Winnie and Rosemary that they would 
have good news for them soon, they drove off 
toward Bennington, the county seat. 

They said little, but they were more worried 
than they cared to admit. The highway was a 
state road and automobiles ran in both direc¬ 
tions, two fairly steady streams. It was dark 
by now and the glare of the headlights might 
easily confuse an old, enfeebled horse and a little 
girl whose driving skill was of the slightest. 

Warren drove and presently he pulled in the 
horse and gave the reins to Jack. 

“I want to look at the road,” he said, leaping 
lightly over the wheel and turning his pocket 
flash light full on the dusty macadam. 





CHAPTER XXI 


W J 


DOWN LINDEN ROAD 

'HAT is it?” asked Richard eagerly. 
“Yes, what is it?” urged Jack. 
Warren stooped and picked up 
something from the road. 

“A horse shoe,” he said briefly. “One of 
Belle’s—hers were old and thin, you know. Rich. 
And over here—” he walked a few steps to a 
crossroad—“Sarah must have turned off. You 
can see the marks.” 

“Well,” sheer relief spoke in Richard’s voice, 
“that’s one thing to be thankful for; if she turned 
off from the main road, she wouldn’t meet many 
cars. But how far do you suppose she can have 
gone down the Linden road?” 

Warreri climbed back into the buggy and 
turned Tony’s head down the Linden road. 

“She hasn’t gone far, not with Belle,” he as¬ 
serted confidently. “The old horse couldn’t 
stand a long trip; I don’t know whether there 
are any places for Sarah to drive in down here, 
223 


224 


RAINBOW HILL 


but I hope some kind farmer has her safely 
housed.” 

The Linden road was very dark and there was 
no moon to help out the two twinkling buggy 
lights. Suddenly Tony whinnied. 

“Pull in, pull in!” cried Richard excitedly. 
“I think I see something!” 

With a sharp “Whoa!” Warren brought the 
buggy to a standstill. 

“Unscrew one of the lights,” he directed Rich¬ 
ard, at the same time jumping out and running 
to Tony’s head with the rope and weight, a wise 
precaution for the horse might take fright eas¬ 
ily in that strange place and start to run. 
“Come on, Jack.” 

They had to go only a few rods. Then the 
buggy lamp and the pocket flash showed them 
the runabout, with something dark and small 
curled up on the seat. The mare was down be¬ 
tween the shafts and she raised her head inquir¬ 
ingly as the lights flashed into her patient eyes. 

“Sarah—asleep!” whispered Jack. “And the 
pig, too!” 

“Belle fell down and Sarah couldn’t get her 
up,” said Warren, realizing at once what had 
occurred. “The poor kid—she must have been 
frightened stiff.” 






DOWN LINDEN ROAD 


225 


Jack pulled himself up on the runabout step 
and leaned over Sarah. The tears were not dry 
on her cheeks and as he looked she opened her 
dark eyes with a little cry. 

“You’re all right, Sarah,” he said soothingly. 
“Warren and Richard and I have come to take 
you home.” 

To his astonishment, Sarah, who hated demon¬ 
stration of any kind, threw her arms about his 
neck and burrowed her face on his shoulder. 
Bony rolled protestingly to the floor and 
squeaked sharply as he hit the dashboard in his 
descent. 

“The horse fell down,” sobbed Sarah, “and 
she wouldn’t get up. And it got darker and 
darker and there weren’t any houses anywhere. 
Is Belle dead, Jack?” 

“Not a bit of it,” said Jack stoutly. “She 
was tired, because she is an old horse and isn’t 
used to traveling far.” 

“Now that she is rested, we’ll have no trouble 
getting her home,” put in Warren. “You stay 
where you are, Sarah, till we get her up.” 

But Sarah had had enough of the runabout 
and she insisted on climbing down while the boys 
got Belle to her feet and went over the harness. 

“It’s a wonder it didn’t slide off her,” declared 




226 


RAINBOW HILL 


Warren as he cinched belts and snapped unfas¬ 
tened buckles. “I’ll give you a lesson in harness¬ 
ing some day, Sarah, for you still have a few 
points to learn.” 

It was an odd procession that drove into 
Rainbow Hill lane an hour later. They dared 
not hurry the old horse and Sarah flatly refused 
to be taken home in the buggy with Tony, leav¬ 
ing Belle and the runabout to be driven in at a 
slower pace. Jack would have bundled her off 
unceremoniously but Warren, while admitting 
that she had “made enough trouble and ought to 
consider the feelings of other people once in a 
while” would not force the issue. 

“She’s dead tired and she’s been badly fright¬ 
ened,” he said quietly. “After all, it will mean 
a difference of not more than half an hour. We’ll 
wait for old Belle.” 

So Jack and Richard, driving the runabout 
and the old mare, set the pace and Sarah and 
Bony in the buggy with Warren followed be¬ 
hind Tony. 

Rosemary and Winnie and the Hildreths 
came running out to greet the prodigal, who had 
to be awakened to answer their eager questions 
_and Winnie bore Sarah off to bed while Rose¬ 
mary flew to the kitchen and began making 





DOWN LINDEN ROAD 


227 


sandwiches to serve with the ginger ale she knew 
was in the ice box. Excitement has a way of 
making people hungry and the boys especially 
were appreciative of the refreshments. 

Doctor Hugh read his small sister a severe 
lecture the next morning when, upon his return 
with his mother, he heard the story, and ex¬ 
tracted her promise that hereafter she would not 
leave the farm without explicit permission. A 
subdued Sarah made a shamefaced apology to 
Mr. Hildreth for taking his horse and runabout 
and for as much as three days she slipped about 
like a meek little shadow. 

“Jack told me you found the horse shoe, War¬ 
ren,” said Rosemary, meeting Warren that next 
morning as he came from the creamery. “So 
you really found Sarah for us—and I think you 
are very quick and clever.” 

“Any one of us would have found her,” de¬ 
clared Warren lightly. “You can’t really lose 
a little girl and a horse—you’re bound to fall 
over them sometime, sooner or later.” 

“Sarah might have had to spend the night on 
that lonely road,” insisted Rosemary. “Hugh 
says so, too. And Mother thinks just as we do.” 

She turned, with a little determined nod of 
her pretty head. 



228 


RAINBOW HILL 


“Rosemary!” Warren’s voice halted her. 

He made no motion to drive on to the barn, 
but sat in the wagon, holding the reins, and look¬ 
ing at her steadily. 

“You’re not angry with me now?” he said. 

Rosemary was perplexed. 

“Of course not.” 

“But you were a night or two ago—when I 
met you and Doctor Hugh?” 

The tell-tale color rose under Rosemary’s 
smooth skin. 

“Well—” she hesitated. “Perhaps I was 
then—just a little. But I get mad so easily, 
Warren, it doesn’t count.” 

“I’d prefer,” said Warren composedly, “to 
always be good friends with you.” 

The impulsive Rosemary took a step forward 
that brought her close to the wagon. 

“We are friends,” she assured Warren eag¬ 
erly. Then, mischief welling up in her blue eyes, 
“When you’ve known me a little longer you’ll 
find out that I often quarrel with my friends.” 

“I don’t,” said Warren soberly, but he drove 
away to the barn whistling merrily. 

The few days remaining of Doctor Hugh’s 
vacation and Jack’s agreement with Mr. Hil¬ 
dreth, passed quickly and pleasantly. The three 





DOWN LINDEN ROAD _ 229 

boys worked together in perfect harmony and 
Jack began to enjoy a sense of power and ease 
that came with the hardening of his muscles. The 
sun might be hot, but the rays no longer made 
him uncomfortable—the rows of vines were as 
long as ever, but he swung down them easily 
and picked the ripe tomatoes almost automati¬ 
cally. 

“I don’t see why you don’t finish out the 
month,” Mr. Hildreth said to him the night be¬ 
fore his two weeks were over. “I’d like to have 
you first rate and it seems a pity to leave just 
when you’re broke in.” 

Somewhat to his surprise, Jack heard him¬ 
self agreeing to stay. Warren and Richard 
heartily applauded his decision and Doctor 
Hugh agreed to carry back an approved report 
to Mrs. Welles. 

“It will do you good, in many ways. Jack,” 
said the doctor seriously. “And if you are go¬ 
ing to try for the football team this fall, you’ll 
be in the pink of condition.” 

The next day Doctor Hugh went back to re¬ 
sume his regular schedule though, he promised 
his disconsolate family, he would try to spend 
the week-ends, or Sundays at least, with them. 

“But I hope you realize that the summer is 




230 


RAINBOW HILL 


almost over,” he told Rosemary who was riding 
with him down to the cross-roads where she ex- 
' pected to get out and walk back. “School opens 
next month and we must be safely moved back 
to Eastshore before that important day. You 
have not more than four weeks left to spend at 
Rainbow Hill, young lady.” 

“I’ll go over and see Louisa,” said Rosemary 
to herself, as she reached the back road that led 
to the Gay farm, after leaving her brother. 
“Mother won’t expect me back till lunch time, 
for I told her I might stop in and see Miss Clin¬ 
ton. Rut I’ve seen Louisa only once since Hugh 
came.” 

The Gay farm looked more dilapidated than 
ever to Rosemary’s eyes and the little attempt 
at a flower bed, in the center of the long, dried 
grass before the house, only made the general 
effect more hopeless. 

Rosemary walked around to the back door 
and knocked. Louisa answered, carrying June 
in her arms. 

“I thought maybe you’d gone back to East- 
shore,” said Louisa dully, “but Sarah and Shir¬ 
ley said no, your brother was visiting for his 
vacation.” 

“Yes, Hugh did come,” answered Rosemary 



DOWN LINDEN ROAD 


231 


honestly, “and we went somewhere with him 
nearly every day, if only over the farm. I would 
have liked to bring him to see you and Alec, but 
I was afraid—I thought—” 

“Mercy,, I’m glad you didn’t!” the idea seemed 
enough to frighten Louisa. “I wouldn’t want a 
stranger coming here.” 

“Louisa, do you know Miss Clinton?” asked 
Rosemary suddenly. “She lives all by herself 
and she is so lonesome.” 

She had a hazy thought of suggesting that 
Louisa might be willing to go and see Miss Clin¬ 
ton—Louisa needed friends as badly as the little 
wheel-chair woman did—but the girl’s answer 
was not encouraging. 

“She lives in that little yellow house,” said 
Louisa. “She may be lonely, but she has enough 
money to live on and no one need be pitied who 
can keep out of debt.” 

“Oh, Louisa!” Rosemary drew nearer in con¬ 
cern. “Haven’t you the money for the inter¬ 
est?” 

“Not a cent,” said Louisa bitterly. “The little 
we did have saved toward it, we had to spend on 
a pump. The old one gave out and you can’t 
get along without water, no matter what else 
you can do without.” 



232 


RAINBOW HILL 


Rosemary glanced toward the shining new 
pump—so obviously new and shiny that it made 
everything else in the kitchen look shabbier by 
contrast. 

“There ought to be some way to get money 
when you need it/* she said earnestly. ^ 

“There isn’t,” Louisa informed her. “Don’t 
you suppose I’ve thought and thought? No 
matter how much you need it, there isn’t any 
money to get—and if there was, you wouldn t 
need it because it would be there to get,” and 
Louisa laughed rather hysterically. 

“That may not make good sense,” she added, 
“but I can’t help that; it is true.” 





CHAPTER XXII 


SARAH HAS AH IDEA 

R OSEMARY walked home slowly. 

Louisa, worn out by worry and work, 
had yielded to the luxury of a good cry 
and though, when she had wiped her eyes, she 
declared she felt much better and more cheerful 
than for a week, Rosemary was not convinced. 

A glimpse of Alec, thin and brown, with the 
same worried look in his nice clear eyes, had not 
helped to convince her. It was plain that both 
Louisa and Alec were expecting the foreclosure 
of the mortgage on the farm and anticipating the 
separation of the family. 

“I couldn’t stand it,” said Rosemary earnestly 
to a chipmunk, who shook his head in sympathy. 
“I couldn’t stand it, if Sarah and Shirley and I 
had to go live in different houses. Suppose we 
didn’t have Mother and Hugh and Winnie!” 

The realization of her own blessings only em¬ 
phasized the hard position of the Gays without 
233 


234 RAINBOW HILL 

a father or mother. By the time she had come 
to the Rainbow Hill orchard, Rosemary was 
feeling very blue indeed. _ 

“Come on up!” two sweet little voices called 
to her. “Come on up, Rosemary!” 

Rosemary peered at the trees, and giggles 
floating from one gnarled old apple tree revealed 
where Sarah and Shirley were hidden. 

“What’s the matter?” asked Shirley instantly, 
when Rosemary had swung herself up to a seat 
beside them. 

“I’ve been to see Louisa Gay,” explamed 
Rosemary, “and they haven’t a cent of money 
for the interest on that awful mortgage. It’s 
due the first of September and Louisa says the 
man will take the farm and they’ll all be on the 
town!” 

“I thought you had to go and live in the poor 
house, if folks took your farm,” objected Sarah. 

“It’s all the same,” said Rosemary impa¬ 
tiently. “Louisa says so. When you’re ‘on the 
town’ that means the town supports you and you 
live at the poor farm. Girls, we just have to get 
some money for the Gays!” 

“Ask Hugh,” suggested Shirley, as her fa¬ 
vorite way out of money difficulties. 

“We can’t,” Rosemary told her. “Louisa and 








SARAH HAS AN IDEA 


285 


Alec don’t like strangers and Hugh is a stranger 
to them. We mustn’t even tell grown-up peo¬ 
ple about them, because if they know the Gays 
are poor, they’ll come and take them to the poor 
farm, anyway. Alec says they don’t even go to 
the Center any more because he doesn’t want 
people to ask him questions.” 

When Winnie rang the bell to signal that 
lunch was ready, the three girls had not suc¬ 
ceeded in forming any definite plan to help the 
Gays. They had made up their minds that 
money must be obtained, but the way was any¬ 
thing but clear. 

“You see,” said Rosemary, taking up the 
question again after lunch, “we can’t ask War¬ 
ren or Richard for any money. They are sav¬ 
ing all they earn to get them through agricul¬ 
tural college and Hugh told me they have to do 
some work in the winter to get enough. Jack 
never has any money of his own—he will have 
some at the end of the month, but he’s set his 
heart on buying his mother something lovely 
with the first money he has ever really earned. 
There doesn’t seem to be anybody to help Louisa 
and Alec, except us.” 

“And we haven’t a cent, except the five-dollar 
gold pieces Aunt Trudy sent us Fourth of 
July,” said Sarah practically. 




236 


RAINBOW HILL 


“We must think,” declared Rosemary sol¬ 
emnly. “You think hard, Sarah, and you, too, 
Shirley. And I’ll think with all my might.” 

Such concentration of thought should have 
produced some result, but the next morning each 
had failure to report. Then Richard announced 
that Solomon must he shod and offered to take 
anyone over who felt free to spend the morning 
in Bennington. 

“I have to make up my lost practising,” said 
Rosemary, “and Hugh is going to take Mother 
and Shirley with him—he telephoned he’d stop 
for them. Sarah would like to go—she was 
wailing that everyone went to places and left 
her home.” 

Sarah climbed happily into her place by Rich¬ 
ard and they drove off to Bennington, at a 
slower pace than usual for Richard wished to 
“favor” the shoeless foot. 

“Oh, look!” the rather silent Sarah kindled 
into animation at the sight of a gay-colored 
poster tacked to a telegraph pole along the road. 
“What’s that, Richard?” 

“Circus!” he answered smilingly. “Coming 
next month. See the lions, Sarah? How would 
you like one of those to play with, eh?” 

He obligingly pulled in the willing Solomon, 






SARAH HAS AN IDEA 


237 


and Sarah studied the poster with intent, serious 
dark eyes. Driving on, Richard found her 
curiously self-absorbed. She answered him in 
monosyllables and was apparently deep in a 
brown study, 

“A penny for your thoughts ?” he offered, won¬ 
dering what she could be pondering over. 

But Sarah refused to sell and continued to be 
silent. 

Richard would have been surprised indeed, 
could he have seen what was going on in that 
active little brain. The circus poster had shown 
Sarah, besides the wonderful lions, a marvelous 
performing bear, dancing on his hind legs. A 
crowd of people laughed at him and applauded. 

“Bony can do that!” Sarah had thought with 
pride, and then, like a flash, followed the 
thought: “I could sell Bony to the circus and 
give the money to Louisa!” 

The rest of the way to Bennington was occu¬ 
pied, as far as Sarah was concerned, in selling 
Bony to the owner of the bear, who promised to 
give the pig a kind home and explain to him fre¬ 
quently why his mistress had consented to let him 
leave Rainbow Hill. 

Sarah had reached the moment when she put 
her precious pig into the bear man’s hands (she 



238 


RAINBOW HILL 


innocently assumed that he must have charge of 
all the circus animals) just as Richard drew 
up before the blacksmith’s shop. 

“You don’t want to hang around here,” said 
Richard authoritatively, lifting her down from 
the seat. “I’ll have to give some orders about 
shoeing Solomon and you wait for me on the side 
porch of the hotel. I won t be long. 

He led Sarah unprotestingly—though at any 
other time she would have teased to be allowed 
to stay and watch the fascinating work of the 
smithy—across the street and to the steep little 
flight of steps that led to the pleasant, vine- 
covered side porch of the country hotel. 

“Good morning, Mrs. King,” he said, lifting 
his hat as a gray-haired woman peered over the 
railing at them. “This is Sarah Willis—I want 
to have her wait here while I’m over at the shop. 

“She’ll be all right,” answered Mrs. King 
kindly. “She can sit here and rest; it’s nice and 
shady.” 

Mrs. King was shelling peas, and Sarah sat 
down in the cretonne-covered rocking chair next 
to her. There was one other person on the porch 
—a stout gentleman, stretched out in an arm 
chair, sound asleep. His face was covered with 
a white silk handkerchief which partially hid his 
round, bald head. 




SARAH HAS AN IDEA 


239 


“Do you like the country?” asked Mrs. King, 
glancing toward her small visitor while her 
clever, quick fingers sent a continuous shower 
of peas rattling into the pan in her lap. 

“Oh, yes, I like it,” nodded Sarah with en¬ 
thusiasm. “I like it lots better than Eastshore 
and going to school. I wouldn’t mind living in 
the country for always.” 

“But you’d have to go to school if you lived in 
the country,” said Mrs. King mildly. “You 
can’t get away from lesson-books, no matter 
where you go.” 

“Not in Africa?” suggested Sarah who never 
disdained an argument. 

“I’ve never been in Africa,” Mrs. King re¬ 
plied, “so I can’t tell you positively. But my 
guess is all the children who aren’t natives, have 
to be educated.” 

“What do the children who are natives do?” 
asked Sarah. 

Mrs. King considered. 

“I imagine they go around without any clothes 
on and the tigers eat them,” she decided, recall¬ 
ing to mind several doleful pictures she had seen 
in an old geography. 

Sarah shivered, not in sympathy with the 





240 


RAINBOW HILL 


scantily clad children, but because of the tigers 
mentioned. 

“I wouldn’t want to be eaten by a tiger,” she 
declared, rocking violently back and forth, “but 
I would love to have a baby tiger to play with 
me.” 

“Look out you don’t go over backward,” 
warned the landlady. “Don’t you know a baby 
tiger would grow up to be a fierce, wild animal 
and probably end up by eating you?” she added. 

“He wouldn’t eat me, if I brought him up 
tame,” said Sarah. “Baby tigers are like kittens 
—I saw some pictures of them once. I’d keep 
mine to guard my farm and I’ll bet no robbers 
would come if they knew a live tiger was roam¬ 
ing around.” 

“No, robbers wouldn’t come, or your friends, 
either,” Mrs. King said grimly. “And the 
butcher would be afraid to turn up, for fear the 
tiger might think he was the meat ordered for 
his dinner. You and your tiger would get lonely 
after a while.” 

“I have a tiger cat home,” volunteered Sarah. 
“But she isn’t very exciting. I like big animals. 
Maybe a baby elephant would be more fun.” 

“Than a tiger?” said Mrs. King, pausing to 





SARAH HAS AN IDEA 


241 


admire a freshly opened pod in her hand. “Seven 
perfect peas,” she murmured. 

“Yes, I could use a baby elephant,” Sarah in¬ 
formed her. “They are very strong. I have an 
animal book that tells all about them. Even 
baby elephants are strong. I saw a picture of 
one pulling a tree over.” 

“My land, a farm won’t be big enough for 
you,” commented Mrs. King. “What you 
ought to do is to go out West and start a place 
in the middle of the desert. But the snakes 
would probably send you back home before 
long.” 

She was quite unprepared for Sarah’s cry of 
rapture. 

“Snakes!” repeated that small girl in a voice 
of ecstasy. “Are there snakes in the desert?” 

Mrs. King shook her pan vigorously in the 
effort to find a stray pod that had slipped 
through her fingers. 

“I’ve heard that the place is full of snakes,” 
she answered. “Man or beast isn’t safe from 
them. Rattlesnakes and all kinds—sometimes, 
I’ve heard folks say, if the nights are the least 
bit chilly, the rattlers crawl under the blankets 
to get warm. Imagine waking up in the morn¬ 
ing and finding a snake in bed with you!” 




242 


RAINBOW HILL 


“He wouldn’t hurt you, if you didn’t provoke 
him,” Sarah asserted. “Snakes are polite and 
they’ll let you alone if you let them do as they 
please. I think snakes are the most interesting 
things to see!” 

“I don’t!” said Mrs. King. “I’d run a mile 
before I’d face one. There is nothing, to my 
mind, more disgusting than a wriggling snake.” 

Sarah looked grieved. 

“That’s the same way my Aunt Trudy talks,” 
she observed. “She is scared to death of little, 
tiny snakes. Even water snakes. And a water 
snake never hurts anyone.” 

“Don’t show me one,” said Mrs. King hur¬ 
riedly. “I don’t care what kind of a snake it is, 
they’re all alike as long as they can move. I 
never want to see one on the place.” 

Sarah wisely concluded that another topic 
would be welcome and unconsciously the huge 
gray cat that climbed over the porch railing and 
leaped heavily to the floor, provided it. 

“What a darling cat!” cried Sarah, abandon¬ 
ing her chair in such haste that it narrowly 
missed falling backward. “Is it yours, Mrs. 
King?” 

“Yes, he’s mine,” said the landlady. “He 
used to be a right handsome cat but lately he’s 





SARAH HAS AN IDEA 


243 


getting too fat. The girls in the kitchen feed 
him all the time. I don’t believe he has caught 
a mouse or a rat for six weeks.” 

“He wouldn’t catch mice,” Sarah declared 
feelingly. “Would you, darling? He’s too nice 
for that,” and she sat down in the cretonne- 
covered rocker again, holding the cat in her arms. 

“No cat is worth his board, to my way of think¬ 
ing, who doesn't catch mice and rats,” retorted 
Mrs. King. “Garry used to be a famous 
mouser.” 

“I guess the poor mice want to live,” Sarah 
protested, stroking the thick fur of the purring 
cat with a practised hand. 

“It’s a question of human beings living, or the 
mice,” declared Mrs. King. “Of course if you 
want the mice to move into your house and you 
move out, that’s another matter. Till I get 
ready to do that, I’m going to set traps in the 
pantry every night and leave Garry shut up in 
the kitchen.” 

“Just like Winnie,” murmured the hapless 
Sarah. 

“Seems to me you ought to run a zoo,” said 
Mrs. King glancing curiously over her spec¬ 
tacles at the small girl rocking the fat cat. 
“Though how you’re going to keep the mice and 




2M 


RAINBOW HILL 


the cats and the snakes and the tigers all happy 
and contented together, is more than I’m able 
to figure out.” 

“I could make ’em love each other,” said 
Sarah confidently. 

“I don’t know about that,” argued Mrs. King. 
“Even in the circus they can’t bring that about. 
Mr. Robinson would tell you that,” and she 
pointed to the stout man who was still asleep in 
his chair. 

“Who’s that?” whispered Sarah, wondering 
why anyone should want to sleep with a hand¬ 
kerchief over his face. 

“That’s Mr. Robinson, dearie,” replied Mrs. 
King, her swift fingers never pausing in their 
work. “He’s advance agent for the circus.” 

Sarah sat up with a jerk. 

“Does he own the circus?” she asked eagerly. 

“Bless you, no,” said Mrs. King smiling, “he 
doesn’t own it, though he has a good deal to do 
with it, in one way or another. He comes every 
year to see that the posters are put up and to 
arrange for space for the tents and some extra 
help, if it’s needed. He goes around to all the 
towns, ahead of the circus, you see, and tells 
folks it is coming; and in the winter he does con¬ 
siderable buying of animals and whatnot and 
hiring of performers, they tell me.” 



SARAH HAS AN IDEA 


245 


Sarah stared at the silk handkerchief in spell¬ 
bound fascination. One more question strug¬ 
gled for utterance. 

What is whatnot?” she demanded, her eyes 
still on the fat man asleep in his chair. 

“Whatnot?”—Mrs. King was puzzled. 

“You said he bought whatnot for the circus.” 

“My land alive, didn’t you ever hear of what¬ 
not? It doesn’t mean a thing—it’s just a 
phrase,” poor Mrs. King protested. “I meant 
Mr. Robinson buys little tricks and novelties and 
small side-show stuff like that.” 

Sarah nodded absently, though she had no 
very clear idea of the good lady’s meaning even 
then. When Mrs. King went away presently, 
murmuring that it was time to put the peas on 
to cook, Sarah sat quietly in her chair, her gaze 
riveted to the silk handkerchief. 

Suddenly, as she watched, a large and noisy 
fly also discovered the handkerchief. He de¬ 
cided to investigate, experience probably having 
taught him that handkerchiefs may be used to 
conceal a set of sensitive features. 

Cautiously he alighted and began to crawl— 
swat! the stout gentleman slapped sleepily, nar¬ 
rowly missing the tormentor. 

Up rose Sarah and bore down upon the scene. 

“Don’t swat him!” she begged. “He won’t 



246 


RAINBOW HILL 


hurt you—flies only tickle. Anyway, if youd 
use a palm leaf fan, no flies would ever bother 
you.” 

The circus agent snatched the handkerchief 
from his face and sat up in astonishment, reveal¬ 
ing a very kindly, very good-humored face 
fringed with white hair and lighted by a pair of 
twinkling eyes. 

“Bless me!” he cried when he saw the deter¬ 
mined small girl. “What s all this? ^ 

“The fly!” explained Sarah seriously. “You 
tried to kill him. And he doesn t even bite. 

“Well, I may have been hasty,” apologized 
Mr. Robinson, his eyes twinkling more than 
ever. “I don’t always think when I am half 
asleep.” 

Sarah’s mind was already running on what 
she wanted to say to him. She was more direct 
by nature than tactful as her next remark 
showed. 

“You’re a circus man, aren’t you?” she said, 
making it more a statement of fact than a ques¬ 
tion. 

“I’m advance agent, yes,” Mr Robinson ad¬ 
mitted. 

He was totally unprepared for the next query. 

“Then,” said Sarah gravely, “wouldn’t you 
like to buy a very fine pig?” 





CHAPTER XXIII 


BONY JOINS THE CIRCUS 

M R. ROBINSON, recovered from his 
first surprise, proved to be an excel¬ 
lent listener. Sarah told him of Bony 
and that animal’s accomplishments and he admit¬ 
ted that his circus did not have a trained pig. He 
was interested, too, to hear how she had taught 
the pig these tricks and Sarah, quite carried 
away by this flattering evidence of understand¬ 
ing, told him a great deal more. In fact, uncon¬ 
sciously, she presented him a picture of the fam¬ 
ily at Rainbow Hill and, before she had finished, 
of the Gay family, too. This last, to do her 
justice, was quite unintentional. 

“I didn’t mean to tell you about the Gays,” 
she cried in quick remorse. “Rosemary said we 
must never tell a stranger about them; when a 
grown-up person knows how poor they are, the 
town will take them to the poor farm.” 

“Now don’t you be sorry,” Mr. Robinson 
comforted her. “Don’t you be sorry for one 
247 


248 


RAINBOW HILL 


thing youVe told me. X won t let it go any fur¬ 
ther—least ways not among the town folk. X m 
glad you told me about this family, downright 
glad. I’ve known what it is to live on a farm 
with a mortgage hanging over your head. 

“Have you?” asked Sarah humbly, much re¬ 
lieved. “Then maybe Louisa won’t care if you 
do know about their mortgage.” 

“I’ve been thinking,” said Mr. Robinson 
slowly, “that it would be a good thing if I went 
with you this morning and saw the pig you’ve 
told me about; mind you, I can’t promise to buy 
it, till I’ve seen it. But I’d like to look at it. 
And I’d like to see this Gay farm—maybe that 
will turn out to be something I can use.” 

Sarah did not see how he could use a farm in 
a circus, but she wisely refrained from asking. 
Richard returning for her at this juncture, she 
introduced him to the circus agent and explained 
that he wanted to go back to Rainbow Hill with 
them. 

Richard was surprised, but cordial, and as 
Solomon, brave in a new shoe and three tight¬ 
ened old ones, trotted them homeward, Sarah 
and Mr. Robinson together explained their 
plans. 

Sarah’s was comparatively simple. She 




BONY JOINS THE CIRCUS 


249 


wanted to sell Bony to the circus and give the 
money to Louisa. The pig was the most valu¬ 
able possession she owned and would surely 
bring more money than anything else she might 
part with—even her five-dollar gold piece. Yes, 
she admitted, in response to Richard’s question¬ 
ing, she was fond of Bony—but she thought he 
would like living with a circus. 

Mr. Robinson’s plan was more complicated. 

For some time past,” he said to Richard, a 
little breathlessly, for he was stout and the wagon 
jolted him considerably, “for some time past, 
I’ve been on the lookout for new winter quarters 
for the circus. My idea has been to get a farm 
in a good section of the country, but of course 
we can’t afford to pay a price a place in a good 
state of cultivation would bring; what we want 
is acreage and buildings in fair shape. This Gay 
farm the little girl tells me about, may fill the 
bill, providing they are willing to sell.” 

“They would sell, all right,” Richard declared 
thoughtfully, “but I don’t see where they can go. 
The place won’t bring enough to keep a family 
of six very long.” 

“We can talk that over, after I see the place,” 
said Mr. Robinson. “You can trust me to be 
fair to a parcel of kids—I lived on a farm and I 
was bound out on a farm.” 





250 


RAINBOW HILL 


Eager as Sarah was to exhibit her pig, she 
had to wait. It was “dinner time” at the farm¬ 
house and lunch time for the Willis family when 
Richard stopped before the barn. Mrs. Willis 
and Shirley had returned—Doctor Hugh had 
dropped them at the crossroads and gone on to 
the hospital in Bennington—and while at the 
table Sarah made no mention of her plans. She 
had a habit of taking no part in the general con¬ 
versation, unless personally interested, and her 
silence created no wonderment. 

After the hospitable manner of the country¬ 
side, the circus agent was asked to dinner by Mr. 
Hildreth who took it for granted that he had 
asked a lift of Richard on his way from one 
town to another. And, the meal over, Richard 
piloted him to the barn, where Rosemary and 
Shirley and Sarah and the pig awaited him. 

“Come on and watch,” said Sarah cordially, 
hut Richard, declaring he was too busy, went on 
to his work. 

Sarah was a little fearful lest Bony develop 
“temperament,” of which he had his share, and 
refuse to act, but he happened to be in the best 
of humors, thanks to a peaceful morning free 
from interruptions, which had allowed him to 
enjoy a full-length nap. 






SARAH PUT HIM THROUGH HIS PACES AND CHANGE OF 
COSTUMES WITH PRIDE. 


“Rainbow Hill” 


Page 251 


















BONY JOINS THE CIRCUS 


251 


Sarah put him through his paces and change 
of costumes with pride. He danced, he marched, 
he went through his acrobatics; he wheeled the 
doll carriage and poured afternoon tea; he 
played the piano and read, wearing a pair of 
glassless spectacles and turning the printed page 
with a graceful air of interest. He grunted 
“Yes” and he squeaked “No” to half a dozen 
questions. And finally, seated in a doll’s rock¬ 
ing chair, he fanned himself as though the ex¬ 
actions of his art were wearing in the extreme. 

“I ought to sign you up with the circus,” said 
Mr. Robinson admiringly, when Sarah an¬ 
nounced that Bony had displayed the extent of 
his accomplishments. “You must have a gift, 
to be able to train an animal like that. Of 
course he is a clever pig, but you have developed 
him and made it easy for us to teach him fancier 
tricks. Do you want to sell him?” 

Sarah looked at Rosemary, who, with Shirley, 
had come out to witness the performance. 

“Yes,” said Sarah, after a minute. “Yes, I 
want to sell him.” 

“You can’t change your mind, you know,” 
announced the circus agent warningly. He 
wanted the pig but he wished to be fair. 

Sarah’s chin went up in the air. 




252 


RAINBOW HILL 


“I won’t change my mind,” she declared. I 
won’t sell Bony and then ask for him back. You 
may have him—now.” 

“Can’t take him till to-morrow morning,” said 
Mr. Robinson. “Don’t you have to ask any 
older person—your mother, for instance? 

Rosemary shook her head. 

“Mr. Hildreth gave the pig to Sarah,” she 
explained. “It is all hers. And you mustn’t 
tell anyone about buying it—that is, that the 
money is for Louisa.” 

Mr. Robinson looked perplexed, as well he 
might. 

“But little grasshoppers!” he ejaculated, 
scratching his head. “You can go just so far 
with a secret, you know; if I buy this Gay farm 
a heap of people will have to know about it. 

“Oh, who?” said Rosemary in quick distress. 

“Well, the guardian, or whoever holds the 
estate for them,” said Mr. Robinson. “Then 
the lawyer who draws the deed and all the folks 
at the Court House who have anything to do 
with the searches and like that.” 

“I don’t understand,” declared Rosemary, 
while Sarah and Shirley began to fold up the 
dresses Bony had worn. “But I am sure there 



BONY JOINS THE CIRCUS 


253 


is no guardian. Louisa would have said some¬ 
thing about it.” 

Never mind,” said the circus agent kindly. 

Plenty of time to find out all that later. Now 
if the little girl really wants to sell the pig—” 

He named a figure that surprised them all. 
Whether, as Doctor Hugh suspected when he 
heard the story, Mr. Robinson wanted to help 
the Gays too, and added more as a practical way 
to assist them; or whether, as Sarah was firmly 
convinced, Bony was the smartest pig he had 
ever seen and he recognized his value, does not 
really matter. There, before three pairs of 
wondering eyes, he counted out a little heap of 
soiled bills and gave them to Sarah. 

“I’ll take the pig in the morning,” he said, 
folding up the remainder of his money and 
fastening the roll with an elastic. “I expect to 
put up with the Hildreths to-night and one of 
the boys will take me back to town after break¬ 
fast. You look after the pig for me till then, 
won’t you?” 

Sarah promised and then, as she did not seem 
to know what to do with the money, he sug¬ 
gested that she run into the house and give it to 
her mother to put away. 

The three girls were anxious to go over to the 





254 


RAINBOW HILL 


Gay farm with Mr. Robinson, but he explained 
that he thought he could talk better to Alec and 
Louisa alone. 

“I’m just going to wander over there and tell 
’em that Richard Gilbert sent me,” he said. “Ill 
say he heard I wanted to buy a small place and 
that I thought they might be in the market. I’ll 
tell you all about it, soon as I get back.” 

They watched him start “across lots” to the 
Gay farm and then Sarah went into the house 
to ask her mother to put away the money. 

“You’ve sold Bony, dear?” echoed Mrs. Willis 
when she heard the news. “And for all this 
money? Who bought him, Sarah? When did 
you sell your pig?” 

Sarah told her about Mr. Robinson, and Rose¬ 
mary and Shirley listened eagerly for they had 
not heard the details, nor learned how Sarah had 
met the circus agent. 

“I always said Bony was a smart pig!” wound 
up Sarah, watching her mother counting the 
money into a little black tin box, fitted with a 
lock and key. 

“But Sarah dear, I thought you were very 
fond of Bony,” said Mrs. Willis. “Why did 
you want to sell him—and what are you plan¬ 
ning to do with all this money?” 



BONY JOINS THE CIRCUS 


255 


“It’s a secret,” declared Sarah, setting her 
lips tightly. 

“Oh, lamb! Don’t you want to tell Mother?” 

Sarah shook her head so violently her black 
hair whipped across her eyes. 

“Nobody must ever tell—never, never, never!” 
she asserted and, catching Shirley by the hand, 
she ran out of the room, dragging her small sis¬ 
ter with her. 

Rosemary’s beautiful blue eyes turned to her 
mother’s troubled ones. 

“It’s all right. Mother,” she urged. “Really 
it is; the man wanted to buy the pig—he told 
Rich it was very cleverly trained. And what 
Sarah wants to do with the money won’t be a 
secret after the first of September. She’ll tell 
you then.” 

“I’ll have to hold it for her until she does tell 
me,” said Mrs. Willis quietly. “I don’t see how 
Sarah could bring herself to part with Bony, 
Rosemary; she has been devoted to him.” 

Rosemary wanted to tell of the motive that 
had prompted Sarah’s sacrifice, but thought 
she was in honor bound not to. So she went 
downstairs to her practising, wondering what 
Louisa and Alec were saying to Mr. Robinson 
and whether he would buy the farm from them. 





256 


RAINBOW HILL 


Sarah and her pig disappeared till dinner time 
and if during the meal the former seemed more 
silent than usual it might easily have been be¬ 
cause she was tired. 

Mrs. Hildreth came for one of her rare chats 
with Mrs. Willis after dinner that night and then 
the girls felt free to slip down to the bungalow 
to hear what Mr. Robinson had to tell them. 

Eager as they were to learn what had been 
done for the Gays, they were not to go directly 
to the bungalow for half way across the lawn 
Mrs. Hildreth called to them. 

“Miss Clinton sent me word to-day, Rose¬ 
mary / 5 she said, “that she’d like very much to 
see you; the letter-man told me. I thought 
maybe you’d go down there this evening.” 

“Don’t go,” whispered Sarah. “We want to 
see Mr. Robinson.” 

Rosemary stopped uncertainly. It was still 
light and Mrs. Willis would not object if they 
were back before dark. 

“We were going to see the boys,” said Rose¬ 
mary. “There was something I wanted to ask 
them—” 

“Oh, you can see them when you come back,” 
Mrs. Hildreth answered. “I’d go see Miss 
Clinton if I were you; she gets lonely and it 



BONY JOINS THE CIRCUS 


257 


isn’t very nice to disappoint an old lady. She 
hasn’t so many interests as you have.” 

Rosemary looked at the speaker a trifle re¬ 
sentfully. Mrs. Hildreth, like many busy 
people, was an adept at pointing out duties for 
other folk. 

“Shall we go, Mother?” she asked doubtfully. 

Now Mrs. Willis knew nothing of Mr. Robin¬ 
son’s all important visit to the Gay farm and 
she saw no special reason for a visit to the 
bungalow. 

“Why I don’t see why not, darling,” she 
answered. “If you are not too tired. Don’t 
stay long, because you want to be home before 
dark. As Mrs. Hildreth says, the old lady is 
probably lonely.” 

Rosemary went on and Sarah began to scold. 

“I don’t see why you said you’d go,” she com¬ 
plained. “We never plan to go anywhere that 
someone doesn’t spoil it. Why didn’t you say 
you’d go when you got ready and not before?” 

“Because that would have been disrespectful 
and rude and you know it,” retorted Rosemary 
tartly. “You and Shirley go on and see Mr. 
Robinson and I’ll see Miss Clinton. I don’t 
mind going alone.” 

“I’ll go, too,” said Shirley. 





258 


RAINBOW HILL 


“I’m not going to hear what he has to say and 
let you wait,” announced Sarah gruffly. “What 
do you suppose Miss Clinton wants?” 

“Company, probably,” said Rosemary. “We’ll 
tell her we can’t stay long, because Mother 
doesn’t like us out after dark; we can stop at the 
bungalow on the way back and the boys will 
walk back with us.” 

They found Miss Clinton, sitting in her chair, 
in the center of the doorway. Then they were 
glad they had come, for it was easy to picture her 
sitting like that a whole dreary evening, watch¬ 
ing and waiting. 

“I hoped you’d come this evening,” the old 
lady greeted them. “Is that Sarah with you? 
My, my, I don’t often have you for a visitor, my 
dear.” 

Sarah looked pleased. She appreciated cor¬ 
dial welcome as much as anyone. 

“I told the letter-man to tell Mrs. Hildreth I 
wanted to see you, Rosemary,” went on Miss 
Clinton, “because I have a letter I can’t read and 
I don’t want to trust it to anyone around here. 
They are such gossips!” she added a little 
harshly. 

“But can I read it?” asked Rosemary, sur¬ 
prised. “I mean will I be able to?” 





BONY JOINS THE CIRCUS 


259 


“Oh, it’s written in English, all right,” 
laughed the old lady, her bright bird-like eyes 
twinkling. “I’m not asking you to translate a 
French or Spanish letter. I don’t believe it will 
take you very long, because you are bright.” 

“We mustn’t stay till dark,” murmured 
Rosemary, wondering what kind of a letter it 
could be that Miss Clinton was unable to de¬ 
cipher. 

“You’ll have it done long before dark,” Miss 
Clinton assured her. “Let me see, where did I 
put it? Oh yes—look in that jar on the cabinet 
shelf.” 

Rosemary lifted the lid of the Canton ginger 
jar. It was apparently empty but feeling 
around in it, her fingers found some scraps of 
paper. 

“That’s the letter,” said the old lady placidly. 
“I put it down on a pile of old papers this morn¬ 
ing when it first came and then when I went to 
start a fire this noon, I carelessly tore the papers 
across and with them the letter. Fortunately I 
discovered what I had done in time to save the 
scraps, but I can’t put them together again. I 
thought you could.” 

Rosemary emptied out the pieces of paper on 
the table and, instructed by Miss Clinton, found 





260 


RAINBOW HILL 


the paste and a large sheet of paper on which to 
paste the bits. Shirley and Sarah sat down on 
the floor and began playing with the toys in the 
cabinet. 

“Adelaide has real good sense,” remarked 
Miss Clinton as Rosemary studied the pieces 
attentively, “she never writes on more than 
one side of the paper. I’d be in a pretty fix, if 
she had.” 

Rosemary privately thought that she was in 
a fix as it was, for the scrawled writing made no 
sense whatever, as far as she could see. She ar¬ 
ranged it tentatively, scattered the pieces again 
and laboriously pieced them together in another 
combination. 

“Did it begin, ‘Dear Aunt’?” she asked des¬ 
perately. 

“Mercy no.” Miss Clinton looked up brightly 
from her crocheting. “Adelaide calls me 
‘Clintie’ and always has. Usually she begins, 
‘Clintie dear.’ ” 

Rosemary worked feverishly, anxious to please 
the old lady and even more anxious to be on her 
way. She wanted to know what the circus agent 
had done about the farm and she was curious to 
know if Louisa was displeased that their straits 
had become known to a stranger. 




BONY JOINS THE CIRCUS 


261 


“There!” she said, after almost an hour’s work. 

I think I have it all right—it makes sense, any¬ 
way. But there’s a corner missing.” 

“I don’t mind a corner, as long as you have the 
gist of it,” returned Miss Clinton gratefully. 
“I didn’t want to write to Adelaide that I’d 
destroyed her letter before I’d even read it. I’m 
sure I don’t know how to thank you, Rosemary!” 

She wanted the girls to stay and have some of 
her sponge cake—baked that afternoon—but 
they were in a fever of impatience to be gone. 
When they finally found themselves out in the 
lane that took them to the Hildreth house, Sarah 
was the first to speak. 

“If she’d had a telephone we could have asked 
her what she wanted and then we wouldn’t have 
gone,” she declared. 

“Yes we would,” smiled Rosemary. “That 
wasn’t much to do—or it wouldn’t have been, 
if we weren’t going to hear about the Gays. 
Miss Clinton didn’t know that.” 

“I see Mr. Robinson!” chirped Shirley as they 
came in sight of the house. 





CHAPTER XXIV 


D 


TRULY A SACRIFICE 

JD you buy the farm?” asked Sarah 
bluntly. 

Richard and Warren and Jack and 
the circus agent sat on the top step and below 
them were ranged Rosemary, Shirley and Sarah. 
Mr. Hildreth had considerately gone into the 
kitchen to read. 

“No,” answered Mr. Robinson, “I didn’t buy 
the place.” 

Three faces fell. 

“But I’ve rented it,” he went on, “and paid a 
quarter’s rent in advance.” 

“Is that just as good?” inquired Rosemary 
respectfully. 

Mr. Robinson laughed and Warren nodded. 

“Alec was over at milking time and he was 
feeling as gay as his name,” said Warren. “I 
guess their troubles are over for a time.” 

Then Mr. Robinson explained what he had 
done and why and never did a speaker have a 
more attentive audience. 

262 


TRULY A SACRIFICE 


263 


“I won’t bother you with the legal end of it,” 
he said good-naturedly, “but these children are 
under twenty-one and when their parents died 
a guardian should have been appointed for them. 
If I tried to buy the farm there would have to 
be a guardian appointed and even then I doubt 
if he could give me a clear title. 

“So, for many reasons, it is much simpler to 
rent the farm from them and better, I am firmly 
convinced, for the children. They are to stay 
on in the house and this winter I and my wife 
will come out and make our headquarters there. 
Alec can lend me a hand with the animals and 
Mother will see that that plucky girl gets her 
schooling. I’ll stable most of the circus horses 
out here and as nearly as I can tell it’s just the 
kind of a place we need.” 

He told them a great deal more about Alec’s 
surprise and Louisa’s delight and something of 
the plans for the winter which should include the 
attendance at school of the five Gays old enough 
to go. 

The boys walked back with Rosemary and 
Shirley and Sarah, and Warren told them fur¬ 
ther details. 

“Mr. Robinson is a brick!” he declared heart¬ 
ily. “He’s renting the farm because he discovered 




264 . 


RAINBOW HILL 


in what desperate straits the Gays are; if he 
tried to buy it, it would take months to get their 
affairs untangled—there would be miles of red 
tape and court hearings and dear knows what 
all. Instead he has paid them cash down for a 
quarter and I understand from Alec he is pay¬ 
ing a generous rental, besides offering Alec em¬ 
ployment this winter. He’s put out because the 
town hasn’t done anything—and now, he says, 
he and his wife will look after them and Benning¬ 
ton can save its legal snail tracks.” 

“But Alec and Louisa didn’t want the town 
to know anything about them,” protested Rose¬ 
mary. 

“Well, they’re too young to manage their own 
affairs,” said Warren curtly. “Somebody should 
have been responsible long before this.” 

It was odd, but Jack, Warren and Richard 
separately, each took Sarah aside and asked her 
if she had wanted to sell her pig. Each offered 
to return the money to the circus agent for her 
and get Bony back. 

“I wanted to sell him,” said Sarah stolidly, 
three times. 

In the morning she kissed Bony good by and 
watched him drive away with Richard and Mr. 
Robinson. Then she went out to the barn, re- 






TRULY A SACRIFICE 


265 


fusing Rosemary’s invitation to go over to the 
Gays’. Shirley went in her stead and they were 
greeted by a radiant Louisa who declared that 
her troubles were at an end and that now she had 
hopes of being able to keep the family together 
and even educate them. 

“Of course we have to be careful,” she said, 
smiling as though that would be comparatively 
easy. “The quarter’s rent Mr. Robinson paid 
won’t quite meet the interest, but Alec thinks he 
can scrape the rest together somehow. And of 
course we will have to pay for the potato ferti¬ 
lizer and the store bill is overdue; but we’ll man¬ 
age.” 

It was on the tip of Rosemary’s tongue to tell 
her about the money Sarah had, but she stopped 
in time and sent Shirley a warning glance. That 
pleasure belonged to Sarah and no one should 
take it from her. y 

“Will you come upstairs a moment, Rose¬ 
mary?” asked Louisa, “I want to show you some¬ 
thing. Let Shirley play with Kitty in the 
yard.” 

The two girls went up the steep, straight stairs 
and Louisa took her guest into one of the front 
rooms. 

“Mr. Robinson said his wife would be out to 




266 


RAINBOW HILL 


get acquainted with us soon, Louisa explained, 
“and of course shell have to stay all night. And 
where, I ask you, Rosemary, is she to sleep? 

“Why I don’t know, dear,” replied Rosemary, 
smiling. “What is the matter with this room?” 

She looked about it as she spoke. It was a 
large, square room, very clean and, it must be 
confessed, very hare. There was a bureau, one 
leg missing and the lack supplied by a brick; 
one chair, the bed and a little table (not large 
enough to be useful and not small enough to be 
dainty) completed the furnishings. 

“It looks so awful,” said poor Louisa. “And 
of course I can’t buy material for curtains; 
Mother used to say that curtins softened a room 
and helped to furnish it. But I certainly am 
thankful for one thing.” 

“What?” Rosemary asked. 

“That I’ve always saved one pair of Mother’s 
good sheets and her best light blankets and two 
pillow cases, real linen ones,” said Louisa. 
“When the linen began to wear out, I patched it 
and darned it as well as I could, but our sheets 
last winter were made of flour sacks, stitched to¬ 
gether. They’re white as snow for I bleached 
them, but I wouldn’t want to have Mr. Robin¬ 
son’s wife sleep on flour sack sheets.” 





TRULY A SACRIFICE 


267 


“Oh, my, of course not,” said the sympathetic 
Rosemary. 

“She won’t have to,” declared Louisa with 
satisfaction. “Much as I have wanted to use 
these sheets and the blankets. I’ve kept them put 
away. They are linen Mother had when she was 
married and I never could afford to buy any like 
it now.” 

“That’s fine,” said Rosemary, a trifle absently. 

She was studying the windows, three placed 
close together on one side of the room. 

“Do you know, Louisa,” she said slowly, “I 
believe we could make curtains for those win¬ 
dows—just straight side-drapes, you under¬ 
stand, with a plain valance across the top.” 

“I’ve seen pictures,” Louisa admitted, “but 
I haven’t any material.” 

“I could get it,” Rosemary began, but Louisa 
shook her head. 

“It’s a silly idea, anyway,” she declared reso¬ 
lutely. “I haven’t any business to be thinking 
about curtains when the whole house is as shabby 
as my old winter coat. If Mrs. Robinson does 
come and see new curtains she’d know right away 
that I’d spent money I couldn’t afford on them. 
She might even get the idea that I was trying to 
make an impression.” 




268 


RAINBOW HILL 


“You have a perfect right to try and make 
a pleasant impression!” flared Rosemary hotly. 
“Of course you have. And I’ll tell you how 
to make new curtains and they won’t cost a cent 
—except money you have already paid. Use 
the blue and white gingham!” 

Louisa stared. She had bought, almost as 
soon as Alec had told her the good news of the 
farm’s rental, a dozen yards of neat blue and 
white checked gingham to make Kitty and June 
some much-needed frocks and herself an apron 
or two. 

“But I never heard of gingham curtains!” 
Louisa protested. 

“They’re very fashionable for bedrooms,” 
Rosemary assured her. “We have some at Rain¬ 
bow Hill—I can show you those. And Mother 
has a magazine with heaps of pictures in that 
show checked casement curtains. You’ll love 
them when you see them made and hung, 
Louisa.” 

“Well—the children can wait for the dresses, 
I suppose,” said Louisa. 

And, with Rosemary’s help, the curtains were 
made and hung before the circus agent’s wife 
paid her promised visit. They were a great 




TRULY A SACRIFICE 


269 


success and Louisa was inordinately proud of 
them. 

Now they went back to the kitchen to look 
again at the gingham. 

“I wish there was some way I could earn a 
little money/' said Louisa wistfully. 

The knitted face cloth on the back of the 
kitchen chair was responsible for Rosemary’s 
idea. 

“You could knit a bedspread, Louisa!” she 
said with enthusiasm. “I’ll show you how; Miss 
Clinton told me they sell for lots of money and 
Warren has a cousin who is a domestic science 
teacher in a large city; he said she was out here 
last summer and offered to get orders for Miss 
Clinton, but she wouldn’t agree to sell her 
spreads. She doesn’t need the money, but you 
do.” 

Louisa was as excited as Rosemary and be¬ 
fore an hour had passed the two girls had, in 
imagination, knit four elaborate spreads and dis¬ 
posed of them for eighty dollars apiece. 

Then Louisa came down to earth and spoke 
more practically. 

“It will take a long time to do a full-sized 
spread,” she said, “but I will have plenty of time 
to knit this winter. You show me how and Miss 




270 


RAINBOW HILL 


Clinton will help me, if I get stuck in the middle 
of a pattern. You are too lovely, Rosemary, to 
think of something I can do!” 

“I wish I could earn some money for the 
Gays,” sighed Shirley, trotting home , beside 
Rosemary when they had left the cheerful 
Louisa. 

“Well, you’re a pretty little girl to earn 
money, darling,” Rosemary told her, “but I’ll 
try to think of something you can do. We’ll ask 
the boys; they know more about money than we 
do, Warren and Rich especially.” 

Her intuition proved to be right, for Warren, 
consulted, suggested that Shirley might pick 
herbs, wild ones, and get the Gay children to 
help her. 

“Old Fiddlestrings buys wild herbs and sells 
them, along with those he raises in his garden, 
to city druggists,” explained Warren. “I’ll see 
him to-night and find out what he wants right 
now. Then I’ll help you till you learn to know 
the different leaves and after that it will be easy.” 

Warren was as good as his word and in a few 
days Shirley and Jim, Kenneth and Kitty Gay 
were earnestly hunting herbs. They made a 
few mistakes at first, but soon learned and as it 
was wholesome work and did not take them off 




TRULY A SACRIFICE 


271 


the farm, they were encouraged to go herb pick¬ 
ing every day. Warren acted as selling agent 
and the little heap of pennies and dimes and 
nickels in the pink china bank grew steadily. 

That, however, was after Sarah had presented 
her offering to Louisa. For one anxious half 
day it seemed that there might be no presenta¬ 
tion, for Sarah disappeared completely after 
saying good by to Bony; and diligent search on 
the part of her sisters failed to produce her. 

“Sarah didn’t come to lunch, and Mother is 
worried,” announced Rosemary, meeting the 
wagon as it returned from the cannery with 
Warren driving and Jack sitting on the empty 
crates in the back. 

Warren reined in the horses and looked anx¬ 
ious. 

“She hasn’t taken Belle again, has she?” he 
asked. 

“No, I looked and Belle is in the pasture,” 
replied Rosemary. “I’ve looked everywhere and 
Winnie came and helped me and Shirley, too. 
And Hugh telephoned he would be out for din¬ 
ner—where can she have gone?” 

Jack spoke suddenly. 

“I’ll tell you what I think,” he said. “I think 
she is crying somewhere about Bony. You 




272 


RAINBOW HILL 


know Sarah—she would run a mile before she 
would let anyone see her cry. And I’ll bet see¬ 
ing Bony go just about broke her heart. She 
was crazy about that pig.” 

“Yes, she was,” agreed Rosemary. “Poor 
little Sarah! She was determined to sell him 
and give the money to Alec and Louisa and all 
the time she must have cared so much!” 

“You go help Rosemary find her, Jack,” said 
Warren. “Rich and I will get up the next load. 
Think where she would be likely to run and hide 
and then look for her there.” 

Jack jumped down from the wagon and faced 
Rosemary anxiously. 

\ “Where shall we look?” he asked. 

“In the woods,” answered Rosemary, after a 
moment’s thought. “There’s a place there we 
call the cave—four rocks around in a ring. You 
can climb over them and drop down on the moss 
and it feels as though you really were in a cave. 
Let’s go look there.” 

The woods were some distance away and the 
sun was hot, but Rosemary and Jack ran nearly 
all the way. Rosemary was almost crying, for 
the more she thought about Sarah, the more 
plausible it seemed that she must be heart-broken 
over the loss of her beloved pet. 




TRULY A SACRIFICE 


273 


“You go look,” whispered Jack, when they 
reached the four large rocks Rosemary had de¬ 
scribed. “Peek over and see if she is there.” 

Cautiously Rosemary crawled over the rocks 
—long afterwards she remembered how cool and 
damp they felt to her fevered hands and knees— 
and peered down into the green hollow they 
formed. A little figure in a crumpled tan frock 
was huddled against one of the stones. 

“Sarah!” called Rosemary softly. “Sarah 
dearest! You must be starved!” 

“Go away!” said Sarah crossly. 

That was all she would say, though Rosemary 
told her how worried they had all been, urged 
that Doctor Hugh was coming to dinner and 
pleaded with her to come home at once and have 
something to eat. 

“Come on, Sarah—that’s a good girl,” begged 
Rosemary. “Jack is here, too, and he wants 
to get back to work.” 

“Tell him to go, then,” muttered Sarah. 

Jack climbed over one of the boulders and 
gazed down at the obdurate little person whose 
unhappy brown face lacked its usual life and 
color. Sarah did not look like herself. 

“Look here, Sarah,” said Jack with directness, 
but not unkindly. “ Your mother is worried stiff 



274j 


RAINBOW HILL 


about you and you’re coming back with us and 
coming now. If you don t want me to climb 
down there and pull you out, you d better 
scramble up this minute.” 

Suddenly Sarah climbed up the rock furthest 
from Jack and dropped to the ground. She re¬ 
fused to take Rosemary’s hand and scuffed on 
before them silently, like a small Indian in a 
very bad temper. 

“She does care,” whispered Rosemary to Jack. 
“She always acts like this when she wants to cry 
and is too proud.” 

With Rosemary to the left of her and J ack on 
her right and no possible avenue of escape open, 
Sarah mounted the porch steps. Someone all in 
white, fragrant and dainty and sweet, gathered 
her, dirt-stained and disheveled as she was, into 
loving arms. Sarah began to cry. 

“There, my precious,” said Mrs. Willis softly, 
“tell Mother all about it—she wants to hear.” 

Rosemary and J ack slipped away. 




CHAPTER XXV 


UP TO MISCHIEF 

O NCE more a flood of moonlight and a 
night or two when “Old Fiddlestrings” 
wandered up and down the road play¬ 
ing the “Serenade” and then the first of Septem¬ 
ber was blazoned on the calendar and on the 
fields of Rainbow Hill. The summer was vir¬ 
tually over. 

Jack went away hilariously for a brief fishing 
trip with his father before the Eastshore 
schools should open; and to the delight of his 
mother and sisters, Doctor Hugh came out to 
stay till they were ready to go back with him, a 
matter of ten days or so, for school would be in 
session by the middle of the month. 

Finding Sarah in a sad state from violent cry¬ 
ing on his arrival the day of Bony s departure, 
Doctor Hugh was soon in possession of the 
Gays’ story; and he not only succeeded in per¬ 
suading Louisa and Alec to accept the money 
Sarah’s sacrifice had obtained, but he also man- 
275 


276 


RAINBOW HILL 


aged to give them a more wholesome outlook on 
the world in general. Although Alec and Louisa 
were naturally reluctant to accept Sarah’s 
money, when they were finally persuaded, their 
relief was plain. Now they had enough cash in 
hand to meet the dreaded interest payment. 
Alec insisted that the money from Sarah was to 
be regarded as a loan and Doctor Hugh agreed 
to this. 

“All right,” said Sarah when this arrange¬ 
ment was explained to her, “but I don’t want to 
see Bony—not ever any more.” 

Alec had told her that the pig would probably 
be brought to the farm to spend the winter and 
had offered to drive to Eastshore some day and 
bring her back to see her pet. Sarah’s refusal 
was unmistakable; the parting once made, she 
was not minded to harrow her feelings again. 

Rosemary found Louisa a diligent pupil and 
the knitted spread was soon under way. Louisa’s 
pet ambition was to buy a good flock of hens and 
raise chickens. The money earned from the 
spread, or spreads she might make, she confided 
to Rosemary, was to be saved toward this ven¬ 
ture. 

“We haven’t had our picnic yet,” said Doctor 
Hugh one morning at the breakfast table. “We 



UP TO MISCHIEF 


277 


must have one before we go back to town. Let's 
ask the Gays and the Hildreths and Warren and 
Richard—next week will be a good time.” 

And then for a few days a round of emer¬ 
gency calls kept him so busy he forgot that such 
things as picnics were ever held. 

Bringing the car around a few mornings 
later, intending to take his mother and Winnie 
in to look at the remodeled house, he found 
Sarah and Shirley placidly seated behind the 
wheel when he came out from breakfast. 

“You can’t go this time—there isn’t room,” he 
informed them pleasantly. “Hop out—here 
come Mother and Winnie.” 

“You said we could go next time and this is 
next time,” insisted Sarah. 

There were tears of disappointment in Shir¬ 
ley’s eyes, but she climbed out of the car in re¬ 
sponse to a second look from Doctor Hugh. 
Sarah, however, clung to the wheel and had to 
be lifted out bodily. 

“You’re too old to act like this,” said her 
brother sternly. “It is important that Mother 
and Winnie go with me this morning—they were 
going yesterday and then I had to put them off 
to go in to the hospital; suppose Mother scowled 
the way you do, Sarah, when things didn’t go to 
suit her.” 




278 


RAINBOW HILL 


Rosemary came out to see them off and Mrs. 
Willis and Winnie waved as though nothing had 
happened. Doctor Hugh suddenly swooped 
down upon Sarah, lifted her high in his arms 
and kissed her. With another swift kiss for 
Shirley, he was back in the car before the angry 
Sarah could recover from her astonishment. The 
car rolled down the road and left her standing 
glaring after it. 

Sarah was exceedingly put out and she did 
not attempt to disguise her state of mind. Rose¬ 
mary, finding it impossible to win her to a more 
reasonable point of view, went indoors to finish 
the odds and ends of work Winnie had had to 
leave undone. This left Shirley to Sarah, and 
Sarah was like the disgruntled sailor who de¬ 
liberately incites mutiny. 

“I want to be badl ” she told Shirley passion¬ 
ately. “Let’s think of something awful and go 
do it!” 

Shirley could not think of anything, unfor¬ 
tunately, that is unfortunately from Sarah’s 
point of view. 

“I know!” cried that small sinner, after a 
moment’s thought. “We can go in the tool 
house.” 

Sarah had remembered what Warren had said 




UP TO MISCHIEF 


279 


when they first came to the farm—that the tool 
house was forbidden ground. He had also 
warned them against going into the windmill. 

“Come on, Shirley,” cried the naughty Sarah. 
“We’ll look at the old tools—we won’t hurt ’em.” 

She found she had reckoned without the canny 
Mr. Hildreth, when she reached the tool house. 
It was securely locked and no amount of tam¬ 
pering could make any impression on the stout 
padlock. 

“Come on, we’ll go up in the windmill,” said 
Sarah, not to he balked. 

She would have found it hard to explain what 
satisfaction disobeying Mr. Hildreth and War¬ 
ren gave her, when her anger was really directed 
toward her brother. However, she may have 
reasoned that doing something she knew was 
wrong was one sure way to plague Doctor 
Hugh. 

Shirley obediently trotted after her sister to 
the graceful red shingled tower that enclosed the 
iron framework of the windmill. Alas, for 
once in his busy life, Mr. Hildreth had inspected 
the pump and left the door unlocked. Sarah 
had merely to open it and fold it back and the 
interior of the mill was revealed to her. 

“We’ll play it’s a robbers’ cave, Shirley,” sug¬ 
gested Sarah. “It’s nice and dark.” 




280 


RAINBOW HILL 


She was minded to climb the enticing iron 
ladder, but fearful lest Shirley develop an 
obstinate streak and refuse, she had decided to 
begin with a milder amusement. 

“I’ll be the robber chief, Shirley,” she went on 
—Sarah had a fondness for such plays and her 
brother often said that she would have had a 
wonderful time as a boy. “I’ll be the robber 
chief,” she repeated, “and you drag in the loot.” 

“What’s loot?” asked Shirley hopefully, hav¬ 
ing a vague idea that it was something one ate. 

“Loot is what we steal from the noble lords 
and ladies,” Sarah asserted with a faint memory 
of old firelight stories. 

“But where do we get it?” the literal-minded 
Shirley demanded. 

“Oh, we go out and hunt for it,” said Sarah. 
“Don’t let anybody see you—remember we’re 
robbers.” 

And she opened the windmill door cautiously 
and peered out. 

There was no one in sight and the two little 
girls crept out and sped to the nearest tree with a 
delicious sense of excitement. If they had 
turned around and seen someone chasing them, 
they would not have been surprised. 

“Take a stone,” said Sarah. “Take a stone 




UP TO MISCHIEF 


281 


for loot. A little one, Shirley—that one by your 
foot.” 

Shirley picked it up and dropped it immedi¬ 
ately with a little cry. 

“Did you drop it on your foot?” asked Sarah. 
“What’s the matter?” 

“Horrid, nasty little bugs under that,” Shirley 
announced, pointing with a dainty pink fore¬ 
finger at the stone she had sent crashing back to 
earth. 

“Well, a few bugs never hurt anyone,” pro¬ 
claimed Sarah. “I only hope you haven’t 
mashed any; when will you learn not to be afraid 
of bugs, Shirley?” 

Shirley refused to look as Sarah carefully 
turned the stone over. There were numerous 
little crawling creatures beneath it and several 
white slugs. 

“I suppose you’ve murdered a hundred, but I 
can’t see them,” Sarah reported. “If I had 
something to scrape them up with, I could save 
some.” 

“Don’t play with bugs, Sarah,” pleaded Shir¬ 
ley, who knew too well the fatal attraction of 
all creeping and crawling things for her sister. 
“I don’t like bugs. Leave them alone.” 

“All right, I will,” said Sarah with surprising 




282 


RAINBOW HILL 


amiability. “We’ll go back to the cave; I’ll take 
this stone and you needn’t take any.” 

Back to the windmill they went and nothing 
would please Sarah but closing the door again. 
She liked the dark, she said. 

“What’s that?” cried Shirley, starting. “I 
heard a noise, Sarah.” 

Sarah had heard it, too. 

“It’s the clanking chains,” she declared with 
relish. 

“What clanking chains?” whispered Shirley 
fearfully. 

“The chains we put on our prisoners,” said 
Sarah whose imagination was stimulated by the 
dark pit in which she found herself. 

“What prisoners?” asked Shirley, fascinated 
in spite of herself. 

“Prisoners we robbed,” said Sarah solemnly. 
“We put long chains on them and they have to 
walk up and down and they can’t get out.” 

“Oh—Oh—I don’t like them to have on long 
chains,” Shirley wailed. “I want you to take 
them off, Sarah. Please, Sarah.” 

“Well,” Sarah considered. “Perhaps I will. 
We might as well let the prisoners go, anyway. 
They make too much noise. Now the chains are 
off, Shirley.” 




UP TO MISCHIEF 


283 


Just as she said that, the noise sounded louder 
than before. 

“Clank! Clank! Clank!” 

“You said you took ’em off!” wept Shirley. 
“You said so, Sarah.” 

“I thought I did,” admitted Sarah. “Wait 
till I get the door open and I’ll see what made 
that last noise.” 

She had latched the door of the windmill and 
in the darkness it took her some time to find it. 
At last she got it open and the light streamed in, 
showing Shirley’s face streaked with tears. 

“I see what made the noise!” proclaimed 
Sarah triumphantly. “It’s the jigger-thing 
pumping up and down.” 

The wings of the mill had turned lazily and 
the iron rods, jerked up and down, had made 
the clanking noise. 

“I don’t want to play that any more,” said 
Shirley with more decision than she usually 
showed. 

“We’ll play we are firemen and climb the lad¬ 
der,” said Sarah, pointing to the narrow iron 
ladder that led to the top of the mill. 

And she actually helped the confiding Shirley 
to start the long upward climb and followed 
close behind her. 





284 


RAINBOW HILL 


Half way up, the inky darkness—for the nar¬ 
row windows were few and far between, fright¬ 
ened Shirley and she begged to go back. Sarah 
cajoled and bullied her into continuing and the 
two children managed to make the steep climb 
and reach the platform at the top of the mill. 
As they stepped out on the boards a gust of wind 
caught the big fan-like sails and the pump began 
to sound with a loud clanking noise. This and 
the sensation of being high among the clouds 
terrified Shirley and she clung to Sarah, scream- 
ing. 

Sarah would have liked to scream too. Her 
face was quite white under the tan and she 
grasped the framework tightly. As she looked 
far across the fields and felt the dizzy sensation 
of floating with the clouds that seemed near 
enough for her hand to touch, one awful thought' 
came to her—“How are we to get back?” She 
was sure they could never go down that narrow 
ladder—it had been hard enough to climb up and 
going down would be impossible. 

She sat down, close to the frame, and Shirley 
hid her face on her shoulder. And there Rose¬ 
mary found them—having heard from Mrs. 
Hildreth that they had been seen going down to 
the brook. The quickest way to reach the brook 
was past the windmill. 





UP TO MISCHIEF 


285 


Rosemary called as she came through the field 
and Sarah heard her. She stood up and shouted 
and, because the wind had died down and it was 
very quiet and still, Rosemary, too, heard. 
Kneeling down, Sarah could see her sister 
through a knot hole in the platform. 

Rosemary’s first impulse was to run and get 
help—someone to bring the girls down, but 
Sarah implored her “not to tell.” 

“Everyone will scold and tell Hugh,” said 
Sarah, shouting her plea. “You come get us, 
Rosemary—please don’t tell.” 

Both she and Shirley were confident that 
Rosemary could rescue them alone and un¬ 
aided. As the older, Rosemary was accustomed 
to helping Sarah out of tight places and, it must 
be confessed, shielding her from the conse¬ 
quences of her own wrong-doing. She prom¬ 
ised not to tell “this time.” 

Setting her teeth, Rosemary began the climb 
and accomplished it with fair ease. Her nerves 
were steady and she was strong and vigorous. 
But when it came to getting Shirley down, all 
her powers of endurance were taxed to the ut¬ 
most. 

Shirley was rigid with fright. She wanted to 
hang on to Rosemary and it was necessary to 




286 


RAINBOW HILL 


force her to face the ladder and come down step 
by step, Rosemary just below her steadying her 
with a light touch and constant words of encour¬ 
agement. Shirley cried piteously, she stopped 
often and refused to take another step. Rose¬ 
mary had to plead, to scold, to stimulate, every¬ 
thing hut pity—that would have been fatal. 
Long before they reached the floor of the mill, 
Rosemary’s face and hands were dripping with 
cold perspiration. 

Shirley safe on the ground at last, Rosemary 
detached her clutching little fingers and went 
back for Sarah. Gone was Sarah’s bravado, lost 
her courage completely. She hung back and 
cried and only started the descent when Rose¬ 
mary threatened to leave her. Twice Sarah lost 
her footing and shrieked and Rosemary’s heart 
raced madly. The climb seemed interminable 
and all the time, down in the darkness below, 
they could hear Shirley crying to herself. 

A great wave of thankfulness surged over 
Rosemary as she felt her foot touch the ground 
and lifted Sarah from the ladder. They were 
safe! 

“Come away, quick!” said Rosemary, her 
voice sounding hoarse and unnatural in her own 
ears. “Don’t ever come here again!” 




UP TO MISCHIEF 


287 


They stumbled over the doorsill, the strong 
sunlight blinding their eyes after the darkness 
of the windmill interior. So it happened that 
none of them saw Warren till he was close to 
them. 

“Rosemary!” he cried in quick alarm. “Is 
anything the matter? You’re as white as a 
sheet!” 

Rosemary tried to smile, but she swayed as 
she stood. He put an arm around her and led 
her to an overturned tomato crate under a tree. 

“Sit down,” he said commandingly. “Do you 
feel faint?” 

“I’m not!” Indignation sent the color flying 
back to Rosemary’s cheeks. “I’m never faint.” 

But to her disgust, she began to tremble un¬ 
controllably. She shook from head to foot and 
her lips were blue. 

“I was afraid!” she whispered. “So afraid—” 
and then she could have bitten her tongue. 

Sarah and Shirley were dismayed—never had 
they seen Rosemary like this. They crept close 
to her and she leaned her head against Sarah, 
closing her eyes. All the horror of the dizzy 
climb and descent pressed in upon her, tenfold 
stronger. 

Warren’s quick eyes went from face to face. 





288 


RAINBOW HILL 


All three were white and strained. Plainly 
something had happened. Sarah and Shirley 
had torn their dresses and there were great dust 
and oil stains on Rosemary’s white skirt. 

Warren wheeled and looked back. The wind¬ 
mill door swung slowly in the breeze. 

“Rosemary!” he spoke so sharply that she 
jumped. “Rosemary, have you been in the 
windmill? Have you been hurt?” 




CHAPTER XXVI 


SOMETHING TO REMEMBER 

W ARREN stood a moment in indeci¬ 
sion. Rosemary’s pallor fright¬ 
ened him and she was evidently con¬ 
cealing something. Sarah and Shirley glanced 
at him hostilely as though, he thought resentfully, 
he was in some way to blame. 

He turned on his heel and ran over to the mill, 
shutting the door with a resounding slam. In 
a trice he had snapped the padlock and had come 
back to the three girls huddled under the tree. 

And then a cheerful whistle sounded and down 
the lane came the one person Rosemary least 
desired to see at that moment—Doctor Hugh. 

“Got through early!” he called, vaulting the 
fence and striding toward them. “Why Rose¬ 
mary! What’s wrong?” 

Rosemary made a desperate effort to recover 
her self-control. She managed a shaky smile, 
but she did not dare try to stand. 

“Perhaps you can find out,” said Warren 
289 


290 


RAINBOW HILL 


grimly. “I found her like this a few minutes 
ago and Shirley and Sarah looking as though 
they’d seen a ghost; and not a word will any of 
’em say.” 

Very coolly, very quietly, very firmly, Doc¬ 
tor Hugh lifted Sarah aside and took her place 
beside Rosemary on the crate. He rested the 
tips of his fingers for a moment on the slender 
wrist nearest him. Then— 

“What frightened you, Rosemary?” he asked 
evenly. 

The touch of his skilled fingers seemed to 
slow down her hammering pulse. Rosemary’s 
troubled gaze swept the circle of faces surround¬ 
ing her, Sarah’s and Shirley’s expressive of 
their anxiety lest she be “sick,” Warren’s baf¬ 
fled and worried, and came back to the steady, 
understanding dark eyes behind the doctor s 
glasses. In that moment Hugh became a tower 
of refuge to her and she suddenly knew what 
she would do. 

“I don’t know what made me act like this,” 
she apologized, a little tinge of color creeping 
into her white face. “I’m sorry, because I am 
afraid I have made you think it is worse than it 
is.” 

She stopped and looked at Sarah who stared 
at her in a puzzled way. 






SOMETHING TO REMEMBER 


291 


“You won’t want me to tell, Sarah dear,” 
went on Rosemary, still calmly, “but this time 
I think I’d better; because—well, because if 
there should be a next time and you should hurt 
yourself, I should be to blame. Besides, there 
is Shirley.” 

Warren drew a deep breath and Doctor Hugh 
sent a look toward Sarah that made that young 
person decidedly uncomfortable though she pre¬ 
tended to be absorbed in the antics of a beetle 
and sat down, cross-legged, to consider it. 

“Then it was the windmill?” asked Warren. 

“Yes, it was the windmill,” nodded Rose¬ 
mary, putting her arm around Shirley who was 
beginning to feel that her adored older sister 
had for once deserted her. 

And then she told them, graphically and in 
detail, how she had found the two children on 
the platform and of the climbs she had made to 
bring them down safely. 

“That part wasn’t so bad, really it wasn’t,” 
she explained earnestly. “Though when Sarah s 
foot slipped—” 

Warren looked at Doctor Hugh. 

“But I keep thinking of that awful platform!” 
cried Rosemary, hiding her face against her 
brother’s shoulder and tightening her arm about 




292 


RAINBOW HILL 


Shirley. “Every time I close my eyes I can see 
them there—and it is such a narrow space and 
they could have fallen off so easily—” 

“Stop!” said Doctor Hugh sternly. “Stop 
that at once, Rosemary. You are letting your 
imagination run away with you. Closing your 
eyes and thinking what might have happened, 
will not do at all. You’ll get the better of your 
nerves, if you try. Don’t think what has hap¬ 
pened and, above all, don’t talk about it. Tag 
around after W^arren and Rich to-day and keep 
so busy you haven’t time to think—you 11 find 
the worst is over now that you have told us.” 

Rosemary lifted her head. She was quite 
herself, her blue eyes told Warren. Under her 
arm, Shirley peeped uncertainly at her brother. 

“Come around here where I can see you, 
Shirley,” he commanded. 

She obeyed disconsolately. 

“You were there when Warren said that you 
must not go in the windmill, weren’t you?” said 
Doctor Hugh. “And now you see what happens 
when you disobey him. I understand that Sarah 
suggested this disobedience, but that doesn’t ex¬ 
cuse you, Shirley; there have been plenty of 
times when you have refused to do as Sarah 
asked you to. You didn’t have to be naughty 
because she was, did you?” 




SOMETHING TO REMEMBER 


293 


Shirley shook her head. 

“I know you’re sorry,” her brother went on. 
“Then tell Warren so—and next time, Shirley, 
have a mind and will of your own when you are 
asked to do something you know is wrong.” 

Warren accepted Shirley’s apology gravely 
and then made a suggestion. 

“I’m going over to the mill with the heavy 
wagon,” he said, “and if you want to come 
along, I’ll take you. I’ll harness up now and 
let the team stand till after dinner.” 

Sarah scrambled to her feet with the evident 
intention of including herself in the invitation. 

“Run along, Rosemary,” directed Doctor 
Hugh, “and take Shirley with you. But I want 
to talk to you, Sarah.” 

Rosemary glanced back as she walked away 
with Warren. 

“Poor Sarah!” she said. “I’m so sorry and I 
know Hugh is going to scold. But oh, Warren, 
I think I did right.” 

“Sure,” agreed Warren tersely. He had been 
more shaken by her recital than he cared to ad¬ 
mit. 

“I couldn’t have given Sarah away like that, 
if it hadn’t been for Shirley,” said Rosemary, 
her eyes now on the infinitely dear little figure 




294 


RAINBOW HILL 


dancing ahead. “Sarah asked me not to tell 
and I said I wouldn’t—and I never have before. 
Once she lost Aunt Trudy’s ring and we all got 
in an awful mess, hut we wouldn’t tell. Hugh 
said then it was wrong and not being truly kind 
to Sarah. 

“I didn’t see it that way—then,” confessed 
Rosemary. “But to-day—well, to-day, Sarah 
frightened me so! And I thought that if I kept 
still and said nothing, next time she might hurt 
herself or Shirley—when she makes up her mind, 
she can persuade Shirley to do anything. And 
Sarah goes a little hit further every time, unless 
she is stopped.” 

“If you are fretting about whether you did 
the right thing or not, forget it,” Warren ad¬ 
vised her seriously. “In the first place, your 
brother would have had the truth from you in 
five minutes and in the second place shielding 
Sarah when she is in a fair way to break her neck 
unless someone interferes, isn’t far from wicked, 
to my way of thinking.” 

“But she trusts me,” urged Rosemary. “Sup¬ 
pose I have lost her confidence?” 

“You haven’t,” said Warren with conviction. 
“More likely, you’ve gained her respect.” 

Sarah was never to forget the talk with Doc- 



SOMETHING TO REMEMBER 


295 


tor Hugh that morning. He sat down beside 
her on the grass and gravely and kindly, with¬ 
out raising his voice or threatening punishment, 
made her see what she had done. 

“You were angry at me and you wanted to do 
something to ‘get even,’ Sarah,” he began. “And 
to satisfy that miserable little desire to get even, 
you would have let serious injury, perhaps 
worse, come to Shirley and Rosemary—Shirley 
who would follow you anywhere and Rosemary 
who loves you so much she would dare anything 
for you.” 

Ignoring her tears and protests, he spoke to 
her of the responsibility of an older sister for a 
younger one and explained the far-reaching 
consequences of temper and disobedience. 

“You have frightened Rosemary and you 
have disappointed me,” he said sadly. “We 
both thought that head-strong and willful and 
reckless as you are, you would always take care 
of Shirley. How can we ever trust her to you 
again?” 

“I didn’t think she would get hurt,” wept 
Sarah. “I do take care of her.” 

“My dear little sister—” Doctor Hugh took 
her in his arms and the stolid Sarah clung to 
him crying as though her heart would break. 
“My dear, dear little sister, it is because I want 



296 


RAINBOW HILL 


you to always think first, before you do some¬ 
thing wrong, that I am talking to you like this. 
Shirley admires you—when you do the right 
thing, she will try to imitate you even more 
readily than when you do wrong. You are con¬ 
stantly setting her an example.” 

He let her cry a little while and then supplied 
her with his clean pocket handkerchief. With 
her flushed face pressed against his coat, Sarah 
listened while he explained gently the old, old 
lessons and laws that govern us all. 

“Remember this, Sarah,” he concluded ear¬ 
nestly, “you may think, when you do wrong, that 
you will take all the punishment yourself, but 
you can not; no one can bear the consequences 
of a misdeed wholly alone. Every time you do 
wrong you hurt someone else, two or three 
others, perhaps, and usually those who love you 
most.” 

Sarah was only nine years old, but she under¬ 
stood. Doctor Hugh had a faculty for making 
people understand him. He slipped his hand 
under Sarah’s chin now and lifted the little 
brown face till the shamed dark eyes met his. 

“Am I to trust you again, Sarah?” he asked 
gravely. 

The little brown face grew vivid, resolution 




SOMETHING TO REMEMBER 


297 


and love contending for possession of the dark 
eyes. 

“I will be just as good!” promised Sarah. 
“Truly I will, Hugh.” 

And they sealed the compact with a kiss. 




CHAPTER XXVII 

summer’s end 


“~W7~ EEP away from that cotfee pot! said 
Warren for the sixth time in as many 
minutes. 

Rosemary laughed and pulled Shirley hack 

from the fire. . 

After twice fixing a day for the picnic, only 
to have Doctor Hugh summoned by telephone 
and obliged to remain away till early evening, 
the suggestion of a picnic supper had been sug¬ 
gested and accepted. 

“A good idea, I call it,” Winnie had ap¬ 
proved. *^Wb wont have to start till around 
four o’clock and by that time Hughie ought to 
have a couple of hours off, anyway. I’m not 
crazy about eating outdoors, but if a body can 
have something hot, it isn’t so bad as it might 
be.” 

Warren and Richard had promised to build 
the fire and make the coffee—they assured Win- 

298 


SUMMER’S END 


299 


nie that even she would praise their brew—and 
Doctor Hugh had insisted on the “hot dogs” 
without which no properly conducted supper— 
so he said—could be arranged. He was sharp¬ 
ening a stick to serve Sarah as a toaster now. 

Winnie’s hospitable soul rejoiced in the 
groups gathered about the glowing fire, built 
on an improvised stone hearth between two tree 
stumps. Winnie had put her best efforts into 
the food and she liked to be assured that the 
quantity, as well as the quality, would be ap¬ 
preciated. 

They were all there—the six from the Willis 
household, Mr. and Mrs. Hildreth, Richard and 
Warren; and the six Gays with roly-poly little 
Mrs. Robinson and her husband who had come 
up to introduce his wife to the farm and leave 
her there while he finished “the season” on the 
road. Mrs. Willis had been delighted to have 
this opportunity to meet the people who were to 
live with the Gay children and who would, she 
reasoned, have more or less influence over them. 

Mrs. Robinson had been three days at the 
farm and already she had won the friendship of 
Louisa and Alec, not an easy matter to bring 
about. The younger children were devoted to 
her and it was apparent that the motherless 




800 


RAINBOW HILL 


household unconsciously welcomed her wealth 
of tact and wisdom and sympathy. 

“They need you so,” said Mrs. Willis when 
she had a chance to speak confidentially to the 
wife of the circus agent. 

“Not more than I need them,” responded 
Mrs. Robinson. “They have no mother and I 
have no children.” 

And if the payment of the quarter’s rent in 
advance had “turned the luck,” as Alec insisted, 
it was the coming of Mrs. Robinson that turned 
the Gays back to normal, happy living. 

Rosemary had stipulated that the “grown¬ 
ups” were to visit and leave the preparation of 
the supper to the children. Most of the prepara¬ 
tion was confined to setting the table—on a flat 
rock—and to boiling the coffee and toasting the 
meat. Richard and Warren were in charge of 
the fire and Louisa and Rosemary undertook to 
set out the eatables, while Alec carried fresh 
water from the spring, fished out ants from the 
milk pitcher and endeavored to keep the younger 
fry from tasting everything left unguarded. 

Sarah’s insistence on toasting her own “hot 
dog” led to a general clamor for sticks and Doc¬ 
tor Hugh obligingly ^hittled a dozen wands, 



SUMMER'S END 


301 


taking care to make them long as a precaution 
against a too eager approach to the fire. 

The table looked very pretty when Rosemary 
summoned them, for a bouquet was in the center 
and tiny wreaths of flowers circled the paper 
dishes. Warren’s coffee was pronounced de¬ 
licious and Winnie received so many compli¬ 
ments on her stuffed eggs and the potato salad 
that she told Mrs. Hildreth it would serve her 
right if the cake should turn out to be soggy. 

“Then,” declared Mrs. Hildreth neatly, “I 
should know it was no cake of your baking!” 

But one distressing incident interrupted the 
serene progress of that wonderful supper—when 
the paper cup of ants and bugs and beetles and 
flies that Sarah had captured before sitting 
down, upset directly into her saucer of home¬ 
made ice cream. Even that catastrophe could 
not mar the general enjoyment, though Sarah 
retired to fish out the bugs carefully by hand 
with the forlorn hope of “drying them off and 
saving them.” 

When the supper was over and everything 
cleared away, Warren built up the fire again 
and they gathered around it. The day had been 
warm but a slight chill was in the air—the early 
touch of fall. 



302 


RAINBOW HILL 


“It doesn’t seem as though we were going 
home to-morrow,” remarked Rosemary pensive¬ 
ly. “And school opens next week.” 

“The summer has gone so swiftly,” said Mrs. 
Willis. “I can scarcely realize that this is Sep¬ 
tember. The Hammonds have started Hugh 
had a letter yesterday.” 

“I think it’s been a long summer,” declared 
Sarah, trying to hide a yawn. 

“Well, I’m glad it’s over,” said Louisa 
bluntly. 

Then the baby June was discovered asleep in 
Alec’s lap and Mrs. Robinson offered to take 
her back to the house and put her to bed. Louisa 
decreed that bed-time had arrived for the other 
Gays and they all turned homeward, promising 
to say good by to the Willises in the morning. 

“And remember you’ve promised to bring 
Rosemary out to see us this winter. Doctor Wil¬ 
lis,” Louisa reminded him. 

“You come along Sarah and see the new 
tricks I’ve taught your pig,” said Mr. Robin¬ 
son with the kindest intention in the world. 

Sarah made no reply. She had never volun¬ 
tarily mentioned Bony since the morning she 
had watched him driven off the farm and grad¬ 
ually her mother and sisters had forgotten him. 





SUMMER'S END 


303 


Not so Sarah. She never forgot but nothing 
ever induced her to go and see the pig though 
she had plenty of opportunities later, had she 
so desired. 

The twilight shut down and Warren added 
more fuel to the fire. Shirley pressed close to 
her mother, hoping to hide the fact that she, too, 
was getting sleepy. 

“I don’t think it was a long summer,” she 
chirped, “I would like more summer to get herbs 
in; Mr. Fiddlestrings likes us to get them for 
him.” 

“You don’t call him that, do you?” asked 
Rosemary, shocked. 

“Everyone does,” retorted Shirley. “Only 
they say ‘Old Fiddlestrings’ and we don’t—do 
we, Sarah?” 

“He has a stuffed snake,” said Sarah who 
seldom troubled herself to answer questions that 
failed to directly interest her. “Rich, you said 
you’d show me how to stuff a snake and you 
never did.’” 

“Well, I never got around to it,” Richard 
apologized. “I’m one who found the summer 
too short.” 

Mr. Hildreth grunted. 

“Guess you don’t need a stuffed snake, 




304 


RAINBOW HILL 


Sarah,” he said humorously. “A stuffed chicken 
seemed to he too much for your family.” 

Sarah looked disgusted, while the others 
laughed at the recollection of that chicken. 
Sarah, a few weeks before, had found a dead 
chicken under the carriage house and had de¬ 
cided it to be a Heaven-sent opportunity to 
practise her theories of taxidermy. She had 
stuffed the carcass with a variety of available 
materials—grass and hay and pebbles, mixed 
with small sticks and cakes of mud—and, her 
task completed, had hidden the treasure in a cup¬ 
board in the pantry. For some reason she 
deemed the sympathy of her family doubtful 
and she made no mention of the experiment to 
anyone. 

It was not long before Winnie complained of 
an unpleasant odor in her always thoroughly 
aired pantry. She stood it for one day, grum¬ 
bling. The second day she began to talk about 
“country plumbing” and the third morning she 
started in to scrub and scour and disinfect 
vigorously. Her activities led her to the dark 
corner where Sarah had stowed her chicken and 
the subsequent interview was brief and to the 
point. Sarah buried the unfortunate fowl, us¬ 
ing the cake turner which she was later to bury 





SUMMER’S END 


305 


also on command of Winnie, and this, to date, 
had been her sole experience with “stuffing” 
anything. 

Rosemary leaned forward, smiling at the fire. 

“What are you thinking of, Rosemary?” asked 
her brother, dexterously shifting Sarah’s position 
so that she could not kick the fire with her shoes 
—a feat she was anxious to accomplish. 

“Oh, ever so many things,” said Rosemary. 
“About Louisa and Alec and the circus. And 
the poor farm, too.” 

Warren was watching the fire closely, too. 

“I drove past the poor farm the other day,” he 
said slowly, “and the lawns have all been 
ploughed up and seeded. There’s no place now 
for the folks to sit, except on the back porch. 
Not till the new grass has a good start.” 

“I don’t see why Sarah is always planning a 
farm for animals,” Rosemary declared a little 
passionately. “If I ever have a farm it is going 
to be a home for people who haven’t any other 
home. People like the Gays and old men and 
women who have no one to take care of them.” 

“I’ll have a poor farm, too,” cried Sarah, wide 
awake in an instant. “I never thought of that. 
I’ll have a place for sick animals, too, but I’ll 
have a real poor farm for old horses and cows 




306 


RAINBOW HILL 


and pigs and things—when they’re too old to 
work, like old Belle.” 

Warren and Richard laughed and Doctor 
Hugh patted his small sister’s energetic dark 
head. 

“I wish you and Rosemary could do all you 
plan,” he said with a half sigh. “There’s room 
enough for that help and more.” 

Mrs. Hildreth, her busy hands for once idle, 
stared at the blazing fire. She had told her hus¬ 
band earlier in the day that she hardly knew how 
to behave at a picnic, it had been so long since she 
had allowed herself such a frivolous pleasure. 

She sat now, between Winnie and Mrs. Willis, 
tense and upright, unable to relax, but resting 
nevertheless. 

“It’s been a nice summer,” she said slowly. 
“I don’t know when I’ve had time go so fast. 
Young people in the house and outside do 
brighten things up amazingly. And Warren 
and Rich have made me so little trouble—I never 
knew two boys who needed less waiting on; yes, 
I’ve had a nice summer. I can say that.” 

Warren’s tanned face flushed a little and Rich¬ 
ard stirred uneasily. Both recalled moments 
of impatience, fortunately suppressed, and 
remembered small kindnesses they might have 




_ SUMMER'S END _ 307 

easily performed. Poor Mrs. Hildreth, so 
utterly unable to take life easily, was something 
of a taskmaster like her husband. She prided 
herself on asking no more of anyone than she 
was willing to do herself and the result was 
nerves strung up to concert pitch and a volume 
of work turned out that was the wonder of a 
neighborhood famed for its industry. Warren 
and Richard felt guiltily that they might have 
made more positive contributions to her “nice 
summer,” but they were thankful for the little 
they had done to lighten the good woman’s 
labors. 

“How about you, Mother?” said Doctor Hugh 
mischievously. 

“I? Oh, I have learned to love Rainbow 
Hill,” was Mrs. Willis’ response. “I could ask 
no more of any summer than these weeks have 
given me—love and happiness and health. And 
to-morrow we’re going home!” 

Rosemary smiled across the fire at her mother. 
She, too, liked to think of going home. 

“I only hope the smell of the paint will 
he out of the house,” remarked Winnie who 
could never, under any circumstances, be accused 
of being sentimentally inclined. 

“ An d the gas stove,” went on Winnie dream- 



308 


RAINBOW HILL 


ily. “If that Greggs has been mixing messes on 
it and dropping his glue on the enamel, I’ll give 
him a piece of my mind. I left that kitchen like 
wax and it’s my hope to find it like that, but 
I have my doubts.” 

Doctor Hugh laughed and put back a brand 
that slipped from the glowing embers. 

“Ah, Winnie, you know you can hardly wait 
to get to the straightening up part,” he accused 
her. “You’re already turning the rooms inside 
out in your mind’s eye for a grand cleaning. I 
had thought of getting someone to come in and 
have it all in order for you and then I was afraid 
you might not like it so I changed my mind.” 

“Hughie, if a strange person lays hand on a 
thing in that house,” began Winnie solemnly 
and then she stopped as she saw the smiling face. 

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to be 
teasing me,” she scolded. 

“Shirley’s asleep and so is Winnie,” said Doc¬ 
tor Hugh suddenly. 

“I am not l” protested Shirley indignantly as 
usual. 

“Eh?” Winnie jerked her eyes open with a 
start. “For mercy’s sake, do we have to stay 
out here all night?” she demanded crossly. “I 
can stand a picnic supper, if I have to, but it’s 




SUMMER'S END 


309 


no picnic for me to have to sleep out on damp 
grass.” 

Doctor Hugh laughingly declared that after 
that gentle hint there was nothing to do but go 
in. He helped the boys coyer the fire and 
stamp out every vestige of an ember and then 
led the way to the house, carrying Shirley and 
leading Sarah who pretended to be very wide¬ 
awake but whose feet lagged unaccountably. 

“I declare, I can’t get used to having no din¬ 
ner dishes to wash,” said Winnie when they had 
reached the porch. “I’m going in now and see 
if I left the kitchen in good order.” 

She disappeared and Mrs. Willis took Shir¬ 
ley and Sarah up to bed, while Doctor Hugh 
snapped on the reading light. 

“I want to look over the paper,” he said com¬ 
fortably. “Don’t go, Warren—it’s early yet, 
Rich.” 

Rosemary found her favorite low rocker and 
the boys chose the swing. 

“We’ll miss this,” said Warren slowly. 

“Yes, we haven’t any swing at Ag State,” 
declared Richard with a grin. 

“You know what I mean, well enough,” re¬ 
torted Warren. “Confabs, music—being inside 
a home.” 



310 


RAINBOW HILL 


Richard was silent. He knew. ^ 

“Mother says she asked you to write to her,” 
broke in Rosemary. “She says we’ll never for¬ 
get this dear little house at Rainbow Hill and 
the friends we’ve made this summer.” 

“Have you found your pot of gold, Rose¬ 
mary?” asked Richard, watching the light which 
threw the outline of the girl’s pretty head into 
relief. 

Rosemary laughed a little. Early in the sum¬ 
mer Mrs. Hildreth had explained that the name 
“Rainbow Hill” had been given the farm by 
Mrs. Hammond because the first time she had 
seen the house its roof had been spanned by a 
beautiful rainbow. The Willis girls had waited 
hopefully two months for a glimpse of a rain¬ 
bow, but none had been vouchsafed them. 
Sarah, for one, believed the rainbow to be as 
mythical as the pot of gold Mrs. Hildreth had 
told her was always to be found at its end. 

“I don’t believe I’ve found any pot of gold,” 
said Rosemary wistfully. 

“Oh, yes, you have,” contradicted Warren. 
“Look at the Gays—you helped them find their 
pot of gold; look at Miss Clinton—you gave her 
many happy hours; look at Mrs. Hildreth 
she says she never knew a summer to go so 




SUMMER’S END 


311 


quickly and it’s all because she has had someone 
cheerful to talk to her. Look at Rich and me—” 

“Oh, Warren!” Rosemary protested. “Sarah 
did more for the Gays than ever I did. And 
Mother and Winnie talked to Mrs. Hildreth. I 
haven’t done anything.” 

“It’s your pure joyousness, I think,” went on 
Warren as though he had not heard her. “I 
don’t believe enough people are simply happy 
in this world. That’s your pot of gold, Rose¬ 
mary—happiness. And you share it with every¬ 
one you meet. It makes a fellow feel—well, as 
though he were standing on a mountain top in 
the morning, just to look at you.” 

“Oh!” said Rosemary softly, astonished at 
quiet Warren and yet oddly pleased, too. “Oh!” 

“You’re even glad to go back to school, aren’t 
you, Rosemary?” asked Richard with a half un¬ 
conscious sigh. Going back to school for him, 
and for Warren, meant much hard work and 
more anxiety. 

The dreamy light went out of the girl’s eyes. 
Her lovely, vivid face glowed with characteris¬ 
tic enthusiasm. It might be said of Rosemary 
that no future was ever else than rosy to her 
ardent gaze. 

“Of course I’ll be glad!” she answered ea- 



312 


RAINBOW HILL 


gerly. “It will be my last year in grammar 
school, you know. And it’s sure to be exciting 
in spots. Besides I just love going ahead!” 

Across his lowered paper, Doctor Hugh 
smiled at the two boys in the swing. 

“And that,” he said whimsically, “explains 
why Rosemary is Rosemary.” 

THE END 


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